By Giovanna Pellicani.
Five days, four babies born in sidewalk births. That occurred in Anzoategui state, Venezuela, where the upsurge in COVID-19 cases has collapsed the health-care centers in the area. Some of the “street births” have gone viral on social media.
The first unusual birth without medical assistance was registered on August 3 in the city of Guanta, where a woman gave birth in a Civil Protection unit after a heavy rainstorm that lasted more than two hours continuously and left 56 sectors flooded in the northern zone of the state.
Two days later, a video went viral, featuring a 26-year-old woman giving birth to her baby in Bolivar municipality, assisted by passers-by.
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On the afternoon of Friday, August 7, another young woman gave birth in the Los Cerezos sector of Puerto La Cruz, and the inhabitants of the community assisted her. She had no way of getting back to the Cesar Rodriguez hospital in Guaraguao, where hours before, people in the hospital told her she could not be admitting.
On Saturday, August 8, a woman already undergoing labor was not admitted soon enough to the Luis Razetti emergency, perhaps because the sentinel hospital collapsed with Coronavirus cases. She ended up giving birth at the hospital’s doorstep.
Doctors in Anzoategui state have repeatedly reported that hospitals in the northern zone collapsed due to the number of patients with the characteristic symptoms of COVID-19 admitted in the last 15 days. However, the necessary measures have not been taken to grant the attention of other emergencies registered in the state.
