Caracas Hospitals Struggle To Treat Earthquake Injured As Relatives Get Information In Dribs And Drabs

Caracas hospitals, described as precarious and on the verge of saturation, struggled to treat injured people while relatives received information “in dribs and drabs” after earthquakes hit Venezuela.

“People receive treatment in a field hospital after earthquakes, in La Guaira, Venezuela”

Deccan Herald

Merlí Gallardo, 47, said his husband spent more than 20 hours under the rubble of his house in La Guaira, the epicenter, and that doctors first told him there was nothing serious before he was brought to Caracas.

Deccan Herald

At Domingo Luciani Hospital, Merlí said, “At least here I feel he is better cared for. But we don't know who to believe,” as hoses rinsed corners of the waiting room.

The El País report said Caracas hospitals had been receiving since Wednesday most of the more than 3,200 injured that the Government had counted so far, and it described “scenes of collapse” in the first days.

Carlos Gonzalo, the uncle of a seven-year-old boy with fractures of the femur and collarbone and kidney damage, said, “They piled on top of him,” after his parents died protecting him with their bodies from the rubble.

In Venezuela’s mental health system, Andrés, a 24-year-old college student diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2021, faces a situation where obtaining and maintaining medication is “highly costly,” and his family must repeatedly seek scarce public specialized care.

The Runrun.es report said the Caracas Psychiatric Hospital in Lídice and the Dr. Jesés Mata de Gregorio center affiliated with the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (Ivss) in Los Chorros are “operating at half capacity,” while in the interior of the country “there are states that do not have the active psychiatry service.”

El País

Psychiatrist Marcela González, speaking by phone to La Hora de Venezuela, said, “Unfortunately, there is an almost absolute neglect of psychiatric services in the public system,” and argued the crisis intensified about a decade ago due to resource and staff shortages.

González added that “in the operational services, the necessary psychotropic drugs are not available,” and that they are only obtained through donations or families must cover them themselves.

The report also quoted Rebeca, Doris’s daughter, saying that when mental health care is delayed “you can wait up to four months for an appointment,” and that caregivers end up “just as sick” from stress and lack of money or state support.

A long power outage in Venezuela began on March 7 and affected the entire country for nearly six days, leaving nights without light and days without water and testing nerves and morale.

“A Colombian soldier stands guard at the border with Venezuela in Villa del Rosario, Colombia, on January 6, 2026”

Le Quotidien de La Réunion

Jorge de Ávila, a 38-year-old merchant, described waiting since dawn to buy water from a tanker truck parked in the Las Minas neighborhood, saying the sector “spent seven full days without power and went two weeks without water.”

Psychologist Stefania Aguzzi, who runs Psicólogas al rescate, said the outage aggravated daily difficulties and that many Venezuelans suffer from “a deep sadness that could rapidly turn into depression,” with anxiety levels that eventually become chronic.

For Mayaro Ortega, PhD in psychology and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, chronic insecurity is a factor in post-traumatic disorders, and she said, “these disorders can manifest even in apparent calm.”

The report described children as especially vulnerable, including Escarli, nine, who said, “I’m afraid when I go to the bathroom that someone will arrive and attack me,” after spending a week out of school because of the outage.