In Venezuela's hospitals, eat at your own risk

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AFP
8 August 2018

Hardly anybody likes hospital food but in Venezuela, it's so awful -- monotonous, starchy diets cooked in filthy conditions, and newborns fed intravenous solution for lack of baby formula -- that experts call it an actual health risk.

Take Carla Lopez, 40, who has been hospitalized for three months to treat open wounds on her foot as a result of diabetes.

Lopez should go easy on pasta and rice -- but that's all she gets.

"I eat whatever they give me," Lopez said as she waves away flies buzzing over a plate of rice and lentils at University Hospital in Caracas. It is pretty flavorless stuff as the hospital is out of salt.

An excess of starch causes her blood sugar levels to shoot up.

Even if she were out of the hospital, she could not afford, say, a kilo (2.2 pounds) of chicken, which costs 1.5 times her monthly salary in this oil-rich but economically ravaged country saddled with runaway inflation.

Lopez says that for breakfast, she gets a kind of cornmeal patty known here as an arepa, and for lunch, it's either pasta or lentils with rice.

"In the evening, they serve you another arepa -- a small, skimpy one," said Lopez.

Back in better times, this hospital used to have different cooks for different medical problems, said nutritionist Gladys Abreu.

Now, everybody gets the same fare, and not much of it: 40 grams of rice and 25 grams of legumes.

"That is hardly enough for a small child," said one staffer in the hospital kitchen.

(more)
https://www.afp.com/en/news/205/venezuelas-hospitals-eat-your-own-risk-doc-1869e91

[Fishrrman]

Considering the number of people down there on the verge of starvation, ANY food -- risky or not -- is probably bettern' nuthin' ...