Caracas, Apr 7 (EFE).- Some 13,000 doctors have emigrated from Venezuela in recent years, the president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation, Douglas Leon Natera, said Tuesday, while warning that “the crisis” in the sector has a “tendency to gradually get worse.”

 

“Around 13,000 doctors have gone” from the nation’s 300 private and state hospitals, specifically “7,600 doctors from the public sector,” he said on Union Radio in Caracas, to which must be added an unspecified number of nurses and other medical professionals.

 

Asked on World Health Day about the situation nationwide, Leon Natera noted that many medical students have left the country without finishing their courses.

 

The government of President Nicolas Maduro gives the impression that “it’s not very interested in people’s health,” Leon Natera said, and while “he spends a lot” on the sector, the results are negative because priority is given to “people who have graduated from community medicine programs totally lacking in quality.”

 

He also said the government does not keep people informed about “what’s happening with malaria, chikungunya, dengue, tuberculosis” or about the “many illnesses that have reappeared.”

 

Leon Natera is permanently accused of lying by government officials, who also deny the existence of a hospital crisis and tend to repeat the successes of the country’s medical system as reflected by indicators endorsed by the World Health Organization, or WHO.

 

Meanwhile the official AVN news agency recalled Tuesday that the government plans to strengthen the National Public Health System this year with an allocation of 38 billion bolivars, the equivalent of either $200 million or $6 billion, depending on whether the official minimum or maximum exchange rate of 6.30 or 190 bolivars to the dollar is applied. EFE