Venezuela's Health Crisis Spills Over To Neighboring Countries

[steve from amherst]

In 2016, the World Health Organization triumphantly declared that the Americas was the first region on the globe to eradicate measles. One year later, a measles outbreak erupted in Venezuela.

"And consequently since June of 2017 we've seen upwards of almost 6,500 cases [in Venezuela]," says Robert Linkins from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Linkins is the branch chief of Accelerated Disease Control and Vaccine Preventable Disease Surveillance at the CDC, and in that role he's the CDC's top person on measles globally.

Linkins says that among those 6,500 confirmed measles cases in Venezuela, at least 76 people have died. And after starting in Venezuela, this outbreak is now spreading throughout Latin America.

"We've got over 10,000 cases in Brazil and 12 deaths. And it's also been now seen in Colombia and Ecuador, in Argentina and Chile and Peru," he says.

Venezuela used to have one of the best health systems on the continent. Now it has the most problematic. The ongoing political and economic crisis has caused major shortages of food and medicine, hyperinflation and millions of refugees flowing out of the country