The supply of oxygen to hospitals in Venezuela to power the Amazonas health network, collapsed by the new Covid-19 epidemic, has become a new point of political tension in the country ruled by dictator Nicolás Maduro.
On Thursday (14), Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza wrote on a social network that Maduro had authorized the immediate delivery of supplies to Brazil.
“On the instructions of the president, Nicolás Maduro, we met with the governor of the state of Amazonas, Wilson Lima, to make immediately available the oxygen necessary to face the health contingency in Manaus. Latin American solidarity before everything! ”, he said.
Julio Borges, a deputy opposed to the Maduro government and responsible for foreign affairs for the self-proclaimed President Juan Guaidó, reacted. He said Venezuelans were dying without oxygen, now used by Maduro to seek political support and behave like a generous leader, not the dictator and human rights violator he is, in his words.
Borges told Folha that “the health situation is really tragic. People are fleeing to Brazil, Colombia, Panama, because there is nothing, the hospitals are in chaos. Without electricity, without water, without medicine. This is why people are fleeing to the Amazon, ”he said, citing the humanitarian crisis which has led 6 million Venezuelans to take refuge in other countries.
Borges recalls that Maduro recently sent humanitarian aid to Bolivia and does so constantly with Cuba. “It’s like a person who, while a member of his family is starving, gives his neighbor food as a gift to make him look like a good man.”
Sending oxygen to a country with a hostile government, like that of President Jair Bolsonaro, is trying to reverse the image it has here and in the world, Borges says.
“He wants to show himself as the leader of the poor, the needy, those infected with the coronavirus, when in fact he is a dictator, violator of human rights, corrupt, and who has succeeded in destroying Venezuela, one of the most prosperous countries in America, turned it into the poorest country in America for corruption and organized crime. “
On Twitter in the morning, Borges posted an excerpt from a report on the Argentinian portal Infobae which deals with the death of a Venezuelan colonel in August due to a lack of oxygen.
The politician wrote: “Many Venezuelans, including Fanb (National Armed Forces of Bolivia) officials like Colonel Pedro Ezequiel Romero, have died from lack of oxygen in hospitals across the country. However, the dictatorship gives oxygen as a gift to a Brazilian state to seek political support. They don’t care about people’s lives, ”he wrote.
Like Bolsonaro, Maduro has defended the use of the malaria drug chloroquine to fight Covid-19, even without scientific evidence.
According to the American Johns Hopkins University, which monitors the evolution of the disease around the world, 1,090 people have died in Venezuela from Covid-19, and 118,400 cases have been confirmed.
The capital of Amazonas, Manaus, was the first city this year where the health system failed to support demand from Covid-19 patients and collapsed, as in the first wave of the disease l ‘last year.
The crisis reached such a point that there was a shortage of oxygen in hospitals, resulting in the deaths of people hospitalized by asphyxiation. Shortness of breath is one of the most common symptoms of Covid-19.