U.S. Sanctions

On March 26, 2022, Francisco lay in a public hospital bed in Bolívar, Venezuela, roughly eight hours inland from the capital of Caracas. He had been waiting for more than twenty-four hours to be seen by a doctor for fluids filling his stomach in a hot room with no fan or air conditioning. By then he was stick thin, his skin clinging to his bones as he lay on his side, waiting. When he was finally seen by a doctor and given a prescription, he was also told that the hospital did not have the medicines he needed. His family would need to try to find them on their own. At the pharmacy, the initial prescription totaled $35 (well beyond the monthly earnings of many), in addition to the $5 the family had already spent on saline solution—of which the hospital had run out.