Your Stories

We asked you to put a face to the crisis by sharing your stories with us. So here it is: real stories, from real Venezuelans.

"I’m a paramedic, and I work on an ambulance. I have to take patients from one hospital to the other. I’ve been to all kinds of hospitals, private and public.The situation in public hospitals is worse than you can imagine. Surgeons have to operate using their cellphone lights, because of the power cuts. REcently, I had to transport a pregnant patient to five different hospitals because none of them had an incubator, or all were damaged. Most hospitals have to ask their patients for medical supplies, because the government doesn’t give them the resources. Many don’t even pay their personnel on time (a friend in Domingo Luciani received his salary three months later). Recently, a 14 year old kid died because his family couldn’t locate anticonvulsant drugs because the government did not approve their import (because we have an exchange control). So if you don’t want to believe the media, because you think they have been bought or they are biased, believe me because I work in the area and the truth is so much worse than what the media shows." - José.

There’s only so much we can say about Venezuela ourselves. So today, we’ve collected some testimonials from you, our readers. There are real-world stories some of you shared with us. You may think of them as shocking, tragic or dramatic. We just think of them as real.

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