It's difficult to grasp the scale of the change we have been going through in the last few months.
Our thoughts are with those who are suffering, with the brave medical staff facing COVID19 worldwide and, especially, with the most fragile: people in refugees camps and in countries at war or where the health system is non-existent or has collapsed. One of those countries is Venezuela.
Quoting the FT: "Few countries are in a worse position to deal with Covid-19 than Venezuela. It was already reeling from US sanctions amid a worsening economic and social crisis and has now been hit by lower oil prices which have slashed what is virtually its only legal source of revenue."
In one way or another, Venezuelans have been in lockdown over the last few years. This new challenge will test yet again an impoverished and defenceless population.
At Healing Venezuela, we will continue to help in every possible way. At the moment we are focusing on paying scholarships to junior doctors, providing basic protective equipment for medical staff and delivering stress management programmes. We can afford to continue with these projects because we have built a very strong cash reserves position.
We will take COVID19 as an opportunity to pause and reorganise, but we are already working on really exciting plans which will materialise later in the year.
Below you'll see what we have achieved during the first quarter of2020.
Before shipping to the country stopped, we were able to send 138 kg of medical supplies distributed mainly in the central region (Aragua, Carabobo, Yaracuy, Tachira and Lara). We have commissioned the distribution of basic protective equipment (masks, gloves, sanitisers) to the hospitals designated to treat COVID19.
Up until mid-March, we could continue with our malnutrition prevention programmes in Caracas and Sucre. For just $12 per month per child, we were providing breakfast and lunch to 200 children in 2 schools in a poor area of Caracas and are mote village in Sucre State. We hope to re-start very soon.
In Q1, we have trained 764 people in stress management techniques in schools, NGOs and hospitals. We are delivering on-line meditations and breathing techniques four times per week via Facebook and Instagram available to Spanish speaking people around the world.
Since 2018, we have been granting a small scholarship to 111 doctors in different hospitals in Venezuela. This is a programme we will continue to sponsor as we can expect the burden on the public health sector will only increase and junior doctors will be at the forefront of the crisis.
We donated 51 high-spec tests for patients with very serious conditions such as cancer, HIV and organ transplants. Half of those patients were children, the youngest was 1 month old. We have paused this programme for now, but we expect to start again as soon as conditions on the ground improve.
During Q1, we paid for the repair of a colonoscopy camera at Lidice Hospital in Caracas, one of the few state hospitals still performing surgeries and diagnostics of colon diseases.
We sponsored a medical campaign in a remote and magic allocation, Wonken, in Bolivar State. A group of medical students, dentists and engineers went there for a week to provide basic medical care. These campaigns allow us to reach thousands of people who otherwise wouldn't have access to free health.
We are working on an initiative, Buy Venezuelan, an online listing of goods and services offered by Venezuelans in England which will allow us to raise funds and at the same time to give visibility to Venezuelan small businesses.
We were invited to Queen Mary and Oxford University to discuss the health crisis in Venezuela.We held two online conferences about COVID19, one related to Mental Health and one about the key facts on COVID19. Also, during our stress management sessions, we raise awareness of the importance of mental health.
These are very difficult times and we understand that budgets are constrained. But if you shop online, you can still support us. More information in the link:
https://www.healingvenezuela.org/ways-to-help/help-while-you-shop
Look after yourself and your loved ones
There are many ways to contact us, through social media, subscribing to our newsletter, or writing to us directly at: info@healingvenezuela.co.uk
