Supply Shortages Hit Venezuela Hospitals

www.timesdaily.com By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER Associated Press Writer March 06. 2003 1:44AM

After falling two stories and breaking his leg, construction worker Carlos Bolivar waited in a hospital for more than 24 hours, without painkillers, for doctors to set his femur in a cast. "My family had to get a loan to pay for my medicine and other things needed for the cast," said Bolivar, 22, sprawled on a metal stretcher in the Perez de Leon public hospital in Caracas. "That's why it took so long." Supply shortages in public hospitals - a problem in this impoverished country for years - have sharpened since President Hugo Chavez imposed strict controls on foreign exchange in January. The controls are meant to protect the bolivar currency, which lost 25 percent of its value during a failed two-month strike to force early elections. The strike began Dec. 2 and fizzled last month. Chavez said he would use the controls to punish big businesses that participated in the strike, while giving priority to importers of staples such as food and medicine. Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, gets almost all of its medicine and 60 percent of its raw materials abroad. For two months, however, no one has gotten dollars. In January, the government suspended dollar sales, saying it needed time to implement the controls. The suspension ended last month, but the government has yet to put the new rules in practice or sell any dollars. On Wednesday, the government promised to provide $645 million this month to staples importers. The flow of dollars will come none too soon at the Perez de Leon hospital, where shelves in stockrooms are nearly empty. Tucked in Petare, one of Caracas' poorest districts, the hospital is flooded with patients from the surrounding shantytowns. After taking their loved ones to the hospital, relatives are often sent by doctors and nurses to buy syringes, antibiotics, painkillers and gauze bandages at nearby pharmacies. "Unfortunately, patients have to bring almost everything," said Dr. Luis Azpura, project coordinator at the hospital. "Sometimes the availability of supplies means the difference between life and death." The new controls scheme is affecting all Venezuelans. It includes limits on the number of trips businessmen can make overseas. Venezuelans cannot use credit cards abroad and are limited in the amount of foreign currency they can take overseas. The government pegged the bolivar at 1,598 to the dollar, but it's trading as high as 2,800 on the black market. The government is drafting legislation that would punish those who deal on the black market with up to 14 years in prison. Fedecamaras, Venezuela's largest business chamber, warned that 25 percent of import-reliant business risk bankruptcy while waiting in line for dollars behind medicine and food importers. But price controls accompanying the new exchange system have temporarily succeeded in keeping the cost of food down, the Venezuela-American Chamber of Commerce acknowledged in a report Wednesday.