WASHINGTON, D.C. — On January 24, former major league baseball player Marcos Carvajal died of pneumonia. He was only 33. The common respiratory infection should not have killed him.
But Carvajal was in Venezuela, a country where more than three-quarters of all public hospitals lack basic medicines, and common ailments have become death sentences.
Venezuela’s healthcare system is supposed to be one of Hugo Chavez’s greatest legacies. But severe shortages of medicines and medical supplies have decimated public healthcare.