Earthquake Victims Seek Help for Illnesses, Not Just Injuries

Victims of the powerful twin earthquakes that jolted Venezuela last month as well as people spared by the destruction on Thursday flooded relief services offered by nongovernmental organizations in the hardest-hit areas. The United Nations has launched an appeal for roughly $300 million to assist 1.3 million people in urgent need of aid in the South American country where nongovernmental organizations until recently were targets of government repression. Mobile kitchens and clinics as well as field hospitals now dot public spaces in the northern state of La Guaira, the AP reports, where most of the devastation occurred.

"It is clear at displacement sites that, particularly after two weeks, that people are turning up because they haven't been able to get their other treatments," UN relief chief Tom Fletcher said on a visit. "So, they're not turning up with just the fractures now, they're turning up with those longer-term health needs. And it's vital that we're there for them." Doctors treating people in the Catia La Mar community on Thursday reported an increase in skin conditions and diarrheal diseases, as well as of requests for medications for the treatment of chronic illnesses, including diabetes and high blood pressure. The emerging diseases can be tied to crowded living spaces and poor water and sanitation conditions, which in many communities predate the earthquakes.

Irma Echarri showed up at a mobile unit on a sidewalk across the street from a church with the boxes of the eyedrops and pain reliever she usually takes, hoping that doctors there could give her new ones. She also wanted to be seen for the pain she developed in her nose after the June 24 earthquakes. "It hurts a lot," Echarri, 67, said while waiting to be seen. Echarri's home was not damaged, but many of her neighbors are living in temporary shelters or outdoors after 190 buildings collapsed and 856 others were damaged, according to Venezuelan officials, in the back-to-back earthquakes that killed 3,889 people. The government of acting President Delcy Rodríguez has estimated that the earthquakes left about 18,000 people without a home. The displaced are now living in schools, sidewalks, parks, plazas, and other public spaces.