"We have managed to reduce the incidence of diseases that were previously fatal in children"
Dr. Julio César Romero is one of the medical specialists who accompanies the river clinic, rehabilitated with UNICEF support, on its outings to the Lower Delta.
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The Lower Delta area is part of the Antonio Díaz municipality, in the state of Delta Amacuro. It is one of the most remote and hard-to-reach locations in Venezuela and is also home to thousands of Warao indigenous people. "It is one of the municipalities most affected by all the nutritional conditions, as well as the lack of public services, such as drinking water, electricity, and also diseases, we are on a border; people from Brazil arrive there, from Guyana Essequiba, many foreign boats pass through there," explains Dr. Julio César Romero, director of the Luis Razetti hospital and one of the specialist doctors who accompanies the Specialized River Clinic Type II Delta del Orinoco on its tours.
Dr. Romero says that after the diaspora of doctors in Venezuela, many communities, especially the most distant, were left unassisted, and the pandemic's arrival did not help with that situation either. "The facilities of schools, dispensaries, and health centers were destroyed a lot and we had to rescue a boat that had been stopped here for many, many years."
In 2020, to help children, especially the most vulnerable, access their right to health, UNICEF, in coordination with regional and national authorities, supported in 2020 the rehabilitation of the river clinic, which to this day continues to operate with scheduled departures five times a year, managing to serve since it began its journey through the channels in 2021. to more than 36,000 people.
"Normally we go out with this barge to tour our pipes throughout the Antonio Díaz municipality. We have not left a place where we have not arrived and where the barge is parked we have auxiliary boats, which the community itself lends us to go and pick up patients in the surrounding communities," says Dr. Julio César.
Regarding this project's impact in the last three years, he says: "We have managed to reduce the incidence of diseases, which were previously fatal in children, especially children under 5 years of age, such as diarrhea and pneumonia."
The river clinic arrives at the first community where it is stationed after three to four days of navigation, and for approximately 15 days it visits several locations, providing health, nutrition, water, sanitation, and hygiene services and comprehensive protection of children, since the boat, in addition to all the medical equipment and health personnel, it also has a water purification plant and a Civil Registry Office of Birth.
"There we have a dentistry center, we have a laboratory, we have a micro operating room, we have six offices downstairs, we have a hospitalization area with four beds. We have an X-ray service that also works inside the barge. It goes with general practitioners and promoters in vaccination, promoters in public health, it goes out with all this equipment, once it is parked they do the triage of the population, they carry out the census, apply vaccines, weigh and size the children," says the doctor proudly.
In addition to the care in the different services, Dr. Romero narrates that when the hospital ship arrives in a community, people are organized because activities are generated around the ship that gives life to the community. "We teach them how to treat the filters, how to manage the water that is produced in the filters and the mini-chlorination plants that are given to the community so that they have drinking water available and thus we manage to reduce the rates of diarrhea ... we teach children that they are the best communicators in the community."
The doctor also explains that cultural activities are carried out to exchange experiences with members of indigenous communities and learn from their customs.
River Clinic Response in Emergencies
Dr. Julio César Romero said that a few months ago there was a health emergency in one of the towns of the Lower Delta that was affecting children in the community and they arrived with the hospital ship to attend to the situation. "We arrived at that desolate community, that sad face of the children, that anguished face of the parents who did not let the children sleep because the ones who were dying: they were children between 4 and 12 years old."
According to Romero, once they began to attend to those affected, people who had migrated to nearby towns due to the disease also began to return. Patients were already showing signs of improvement. "In view of the fact that the boat had already been out for more than 21 days and had not been serviced, we had to return and what was my surprise that on the 23rd, before we came, we saw the change in the behavior of the children and the residents who began to smile again, to see life from another point of view."
Dr. Julio César Romero expressed his concern about the situation of vulnerability of indigenous populations. "We have to rescue our Warao ethnic group because there will come a time when they can disappear and for that, we have to provide them with health, adequate public services, adequate nutrition, teach them to eat in their community, teach them to produce in their community. We have to try to save our ancestral ethnic groups that are our roots," he said.
