80% of the population has problems accessing basic services such as water, electricity, education, health and gas. This was revealed by a recent report carried out by the organization Hum Venezuela, which since 2019 has been monitoring and documenting the humanitarian crisis that the country is going through.
The average percentage of family groups affected by severe interruptions in the water service supply was 43% between June 2021 and March 2022. Nueva Esparta, Distrito Capital and Amazonas were the most affected by the severe restrictions on access to this service. .
Given the lack of water, 40% of the family groups surveyed are forced to buy bottles of water. In addition, 74% reported signs of contamination in the water from which they are supplied.
Of the 20,186 household members interviewed in 145 municipalities in the country, most do not have communication services such as fixed telephony (63%) and Internet services (52.2%); however, a high percentage has a cell phone (89.3%).
The lack of urban sanitation services and public transport is also considerable, reaching 21% and 18% of family groups, respectively. 21% reported minor failures in the electrical service and 18% in the urban sanitation service.
As for severe failures for several days, weeks or months in basic services, they affected 59% of family groups in access to gas by cylinders, 69% in electricity and 45% in urban sanitation.
The states most affected by severe power failures were Mérida (75.2%), Táchira (69.5%), Nueva Esparta (46%) and Aragua (29%).
Feeding
The study revealed that 99% of family groups report economic subsistence problems, which translates into serious difficulties in covering sufficient expenses for food.
More than half (55%) of all households interviewed spent almost all of their budget on food purchases, while 14 spent more than half. 23% no longer had a budget to make these expenses.
Among the regions, more than 70% of the family groups in Aragua, the Capital District, Guárico, Sucre and Táchira spent almost all of their budget on food expenses. The entities Monagas (74.5%), Anzoátegui (46%) and Bolívar (37%) are the ones with the greatest restrictions for the purchase of food due to not having a budget.
The food insecurity situation (moderate and severe) improved slightly between June 2021 and March 2022, compared to the last year, going from 50% to 43%. The percentage of groups that require a combination of several strategies in order to have access to food was 41%.
50% of the family groups interviewed never or hardly ever consume foods such as fruits, fish, meat, chicken, milk, bananas, vegetables, tubers and bread. What they consume the most are grains, rice, pasta, cornmeal, eggs and cheese.
Health
89.4% of the population depends on public health centers to meet their health needs. In March 2022, there was an increase in dependency on public hospitals or outpatient clinics (76.7%), while going to clinics through consultations with insurance fell to 1.4%.
From June 2021 to March 2022, the percentage of people who lost health services, due to inoperability or closure in the country’s public and private health centers, increased from 65.5% to 67%. The states with the greatest loss were Aragua (68%), Carabobo (67.9%) and Lara (67.6%).
On the other hand, 91.5% of the family groups surveyed do not have financial protection in health and 58% do not have the economic means to face expenses in this area. The most affected family groups are found in the states of Amazonas (71%), Nueva Esparta (66.2%) and Guárico (63.2%).
Regarding serious chronic health problems, 35.9% said they suffered from some disease, of which 30.7% had not received medical attention in the last 6 months and 21.9% had not had access to medicine.
Education
By March 2022, the family groups stated that 74.7% of the basic schools show deterioration in the conditions of the physical plant.
The aspects with the greatest deterioration are deficiencies in access to computers (92.5%), Internet services (93.3%), lack of transportation (93.3%), water failures (78.5%) and electricity (67.6%).
The teacher deficit stood at 75%, with the most affected states being Amazonas (94.8%), Aragua (88.2%), Monagas (91.8%) and Trujillo (91.6%).
