Venezuelan mothers head to Brazil to give birth due to lack diapers, medicine

"My baby would have died if I had stayed. There was no food or medicine, no doctors".

Expecting Venezuelan women are leaving their country due to a lack of prenatal care, medicine and diapers and giving birth across the border in Brazil, where three Venezuelan babies are born every day. “My baby would have died if I had stayed. There was no food or medicine, no doctors,” said Maria Teresa Lopez as she fed her daughter Fabiola, who was born on Monday night by caesarian in the maternity hospital of Boa Vista, the capital of Brazil’s Roraima border state.

The 3,000 homeless and unvaccinated Venezuelans in Boa Vista have caused an outbreak of measles

Lopez, 20, hitched 800 kilometers from her home in the Orinoco river delta to the Brazilian border five months ago. She is one of several hundred thousand Venezuelans who have fled the economic and political turmoil in their homeland, mostly to neighboring Colombia.

The massive influx of Venezuelans has overburdened social services in Roraima state and led to an increase in crime, prostitution, disease and incidents of xenophobia. “We have reached a limit. There are long lines in our hospitals, and we don’t have enough equipment to attend so many people in need of medical care,” Boa Vista’s mayor, Teresa Surita, said by telephone. The 3,000 homeless and unvaccinated Venezuelans in Boa Vista have caused an outbreak of measles, a virus that had been eradicated in Brazil, Surita said.

Births of Venezuelan babies at the Boa Vista maternity hospital surged to 566 last year and 571 in the first half of 2018, from 288 in 2016 when the flow of Venezuelan refugees began, the Roraima health department said. There were no births in 2015, it said. Read more at:

Source: Standard Digital

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