Daniella Liendo is gaining frontline practical experience as she completes her medical studies. When she is not in lectures or the library, the 22-year-old is on the streets with volunteers treating the injured in Venezuela’s violent anti-government protests. “I have felt very afraid,” she said. “But I’m more afraid that we remain in this state.”
On the streets of Caracas this week, the second-year student treated a demonstrator who had been shot at close range with a marble pellet in the city’s Chacao neighbourhood. “Once we get to a patient we must decide with the more senior doctors if [the injured] must be taken away for treatment,” she said. “The most common problem is asphyxia from the tear gas. We’ve also had a lot of head traumas and burns to deal with.”
Clashes between protesters and government forces armed with tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and water cannon have led to 69 deaths since the start of April and left 100,000 injured.
Wearing white builders’ helmets marked with a green cross, the Cruz Verde group that Ms Liendo works with has been compared with the White Helmet volunteers in Syria. “We offer free healthcare to all during the marches,” said George Simon, a surgeon who graduated thirty years ago, and who leads his younger charges on to the streets. “Last week I treated a national guard officer and a riot policeman who had sliced his hand open,” he said, “Only yesterday we had four pick-up trucks extract people to safety zones.”
Local councils run Venezuela’s ambulance service. Limited staff and resources mean paramedics tend to stay away from the streets, instead waiting in clinics to treat the worst affected. Other emergency services are run by the central government. They have been discouraged from giving support to anti-government demonstrators who are deemed to be conducting a coup against President Maduro.
Advertisement
Emergency medical attention at marches is therefore limited to what the local council can provide, said Dr Simon, who reaches the front line each afternoon having seen to his own patients at a private clinic.
“If we hear gun shots we have to leave for the safety of our people. If things really start to deteriorate over the coming weeks the next step is for us to establish a triage field hospital near the protest area,” he added.
The demonstrations began after the Venezuelan supreme court, which is loyal to the president, tried to dissolve parliament in March and take its powers. The move, which was partly reversed, was seen as an attempted coup by opposition parliamentarians, and criticised by Luisa Ortega, the attorney-general.
President Maduro’s opponents are also deeply suspicious of his efforts to convene a 540-strong “constituent assembly” to redraft the constitution, which was last amended in 1999, when Hugo Chávez was president.
In an economic crisis that has caused shortages and galloping inflation — the national currency was devalued by 64 per cent last night — hospitals are desperately short of supplies. The Cruz Verde receives most of its equipment from donations through social media.
Advertisement
An exodus of Venezuelan medical graduates has meant that even those with the most basic training are in demand. An estimated 15,000 doctors have left to work abroad since 2003.
Allies of the Maduro government have condemned the group for helping injured protesters, while Pedro Carvajalino, a state television presenter, recently branded the volunteers as “paramilitaries”.
Membership of the group, which was founded in 2014 during student protests against Mr Maduro, has grown in six weeks from 30 to 180 students.
Ms Liendo is adamant that the organisation will help anyone. “We are an apolitical group. We’re here for those who need help,” she said.
Last night it emerged that several journalists were among the injured in the latests violent protests on the streets of Caracas. One photographer, Luis Robayo, claims he was beaten by members of the National Guard as he reported for Agence France-Presse, the international news agency.
