In some Venezuelan hospitals, doctors earn less that $12 a month. Nurses take home $6. And patients’ relatives have to enter COVID wards to provide care and clean bedding.
An AP all-formats team challenges the government narrative, documenting the grim state of COVID treatment in the broken country.
Venezuela was one of the least-prepared countries in the world to fight the coronavirus. But it has arguably succeeded on one front: suppressing news of the virus’s true impact on its people. That is why this Caracas-based all-formats team scored a breakthrough by telling the actual story in a country where contradicting the government’s official narrative on COVID-19 can lead to detention.
The Caracas-based team of correspondent Scott Smith, photographer Ariana Cubillos and video journalist Juan Pablo Arraez delivered a hard-won, exclusive look at the plight of relatives who risk their own lives to take care of loved ones sick with the virus in a rundown public hospital.
In the bathroom at her parents’ home in the Catia neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Elena Suazo hand washes the protective medical clothing she wears when she attends her father who is hospitalized with COVID-19, Sept. 29, 2020. On a cafeteria worker’s monthly salary of less than $2, Suazo had no money to buy the needed protective gear, so her younger brother bought her one suit and her son’s mother-in-law gave her a second, allowing her to care for her father inside the hospital twice a day.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
On Sept. 21, 2020, Gavino Suazo waits in a wheelchair to be admitted to the COVID–19 wing at José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, a public hospital where doctors diagnosed him with a lung infection. The 76-year-old retired foreman at a clothing factory fell two years ago and hit his head, never regaining his speech and has been homebound despite surgeries. He was discharged after nearly two weeks at the hospital, where his daughter entered daily to feed and bathe him amid a shortage of health care workers.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Elena Suazo waits to be called to enter the COVID-19 wing of José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, with the lunch she brought for her hospitalized father, Sept 29, 2020. Suazo and her mother cook the food she brings her father twice a day, a 20-minute walk over steep roads that she says has taken its toll.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Elena Suazo walks home, carrying the hospital sheets she replaced for her father, and the protective medical gear she wore to attend him at José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 29, 2020. A desperate shortage of doctors and nurses leaves families rushing to fill the void at facilities that treat the poor, to feed them, bathe them and change their bedsheets.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Elena Suazo, 47, eats lunch at her parents’ home before walking to José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, a public hospital where she will feed and care for her father who is hospitalized for COVID0-19, Sept. 29, 2020.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
One of Elena's Suazo's two medical gowns hangs to dry at her parents' home in the Catia neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 29, 2020, between her twice-daily trips to care for her hospitalized father in the COVID-19 wing of the public, Jose Gregorio Hernandez Hospital.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Dr. Wilfredo Sifontes, right, speaks to families who have hospitalized relatives in the COVID-19 wing, outside José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Sept 4, 2020. Sifontes, who oversees the public hospital’s emergency services and coronavirus wing, described having a fever, cough and feeling sick. Though he oversees testing kits, he himself was never tested and continued to work. He dismissed the threat of the coronavirus, comparing it to a “common flu” that has sparked needless panic.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
A security worker uses a plastic bag over one of his shoes before going into the COVID-19 wing of the José Gregorio Hernández Hospital, a public hospital in the Catia neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Oct. 10, 2020. Two security guards at the entrance say they fought through COVID-19 symptoms, and borrow protective clothing from other hospital workers.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Garbage is strewn outside the José Gregorio Hernández Hospital, a public hospital in the Catia neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 24, 2020. The red bag contains what is considered the most contaminated medical waste. Venezuela’s decline has left its mark on the public hospital, a 47-year-old, nine-story building of exposed concrete, where just a couple hundred beds remain in use.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Mirley Avila, 25, wraps her head with a surgical cloth as she improvises a protective suit before entering the COVID-19 wing to care for her father at José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Oct. 10, 2020. Avila said she's not always allowed into the clinic, but that on this day there weren’t enough nurses, so they let her inside to feed her father and change his sheets and undergarments.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Photographed through a door from outside the COVID-19 wing of José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Mirley Avila feeds her father, Oct. 10, 2020. A 2018 survey reportedly found that at least 6,000 nurses had abandoned Venezuela, and that number has grown since.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Photographed through a door from outside the COVID-19 wing of José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Mirley Avila cares for her father, Miguel Avila, Oct. 10, 2020.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Outside the COVID-19 wing of José Gregorio Hernández Hospital, a public hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, a security worker lifts the trash lid for Elias Morillo to disregard belongings used by his family member, Maria, 39, who died of respiratory arrest and is suspected of having had the coronavirus, Oct. 3, 2020. Morillo was told that the belongings should be thrown away after they were handed over to him by security workers.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Davisela Abril, 37, washes her hands after feeding and bathing her father inside the COVID-19 wing of the José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, where the bathrooms didn’t have running water on this day, Oct. 4, 2020. Family members of the patients say the doctors and nurses are kind, but that there are simply far too few of them.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Relatives of COVID-19 patients wait outside the COVID-19 wing of the José Gregorio Hernández Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, Oct 4, 2020. Throughout the day, relatives deliver food and security guards take it inside to patients, while relatives of the weakest patients dress in protective gear to care for their loved ones inside the public hospital.
AP Photo / Ariana Cubillos
Under the heavy-handed rule of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela is a country where doctors, journalists and human rights activists have been detained for challenging the government’s pronouncements on COVID-19. In near daily TV appearances, Maduro proudly boasts that the virus is under control, and the country has acknowledged only 814 COVID deaths. Critics say that is a vast undercount. The AP team in Caracas knew there was more to the story.
Smith and Cubillos spent weeks developing sources at Jose Gregorio Hospital in a poor neighborhood to uncover what was happening in the nation’s hospitals, which struggle to obtain basic supplies like surgical gear, antibiotics and, increasingly, doctors and nurses themselves. They made the startling discovery that relatives of those being treated for COVID-19 were having to go inside to feed, bathe and care for their loved ones, often with just makeshift protective gear. The few doctors and nurses still at work despite dismal pay are so understaffed that they perform only emergency medical care. Health care workers interviewed by the AP said doctors at public hospitals earn less than $12 a month, and nurses bring home roughly $6.
The AP journalists earned the trust of relatives who granted all formats access to show them preparing food and clean clothes and entering the hospital. The result is a compelling story built around two women working to ensure the survival of their fathers — even while risking her own health. No other outlet has given such an intimate and revealing portrait of the face of COVID-19 in Venezuela. And while some doctors and nurses expressed gratitude that the AP was exposing the miserable working conditions, hospital administrators at the facility would not permit AP into the hospital itself and even ordered the team away from the building entrance.
Administrators would not permit journalists into the hospital itself, but some doctors and nurses thanked the AP for exposing the miserable working conditions.
The government was silent after the story appeared. But as a clear sign of how much pressure journalists in Venezuela face, in a TV broadcast two days before the story ran, Maduro called out the AP and other international news agencies, berating their “negative” and “trashy” coverage. Maduro directed the information minister to call up and scold the AP and other agencies for telling “lies.”
For their determination and courage to report this story and expose Venezuela’s ongoing COVID-19 crisis, Smith, Cubillos and Arraez earn AP’s Best of the Week honors.
