Lack of water is one of the worst side effects of power outages that have gone on for weeks.
Weeks of power cuts in Venezuela have further crippled an already fragile infrastructure, creating widespread water shortages hampering basic services.
Power has been restored in many areas but it is being rationed, and without electricity to run pumps there is not enough water in many areas.
“Imagine the scenario of a hospital without water, without power. We remain without a water supply. Even though the power has been restored, the water is still an issue,” said paediatrician Vietnam Veras Rivas at Caracas’ Children’s Hospital.
“The first blackout hit on March 7, and until a week ago, I was working in this hospital with no water whatsoever,” Rivas told Al Jazeera.
During the first outage, one of his patients was a 10-day-old baby in an incubator in intensive care. He recalls transporting the child through the dark hospital, “while manually supplying him oxygen with some reanimation bags,” he said.
“After 24 hours with intermittent power, the patient started decompressing and 48 hours later, he died.”
The baby had problems when he was born, but the blackout complicated things further, the doctor explained.
The hospital was already suffering a chronic shortage of supplies and equipment and the water problems made maintaining sanitary conditions “impossible”, he said.
“We would wash our hands only when possible, we tried to not drink much water to avoid clogging the toilets.”
