Medical Journal Does Better Coverage on Venezuelan Civil Insurrection than Most Mainstream Media.

I got tipped off on a news article related to the civil insurrection in Venezuela. The numbers of cities and towns affected by the civil insurrection are now 6, down from 8 and those areas are include Eastern Caracas (especially Altamira Plaza where daily fights occur daily between guarimbos and Police/National Guard), and areas bordering the Republic of Columbia.  All sectors of life are affected in areas infested by guarimbos (barricaders), even the medical and hospital sector.

Venezuelan unrest increases pressure on health services

Venezuela's health minister, Francisco Armada, said recently that the unrest had “significantly” affected health services. Health authorities warn that the barricades and those manning them are creating an adverse physical, environmental, and psychological effect on public health.

The Department of Health says that the burning tyres and rubbish on the barricades produce dangerous levels of toxic substances, and that the forced closure of road access to communities provokes a range of negative psychological emotions for residents trapped inside.

Outside of the capital Caracas' east side, the areas most affected by the barricades are the main cities of the Andean region in the west. In Mérida, a student town with a population of 300 000, one of the city's three hospitals has been entirely blocked off by the barricades.

In a visit to the hospital, a nurse explained to The Lancet that patients had to be hauled over knee-length barbed wire to reach the entrance. Staff and patients seemed to be using the quiet morning period to leave and enter while barricaders slept.

The director of the Mérida state regional health authority, Denis Gomez, denounced the situation of the Social Security Hospital: “In other countries this doesn't even happen in times of war. When the symbol of the Red Cross is seen, it can pass through in the midst of a conflict. Here not even the staff or an ambulance have been able to get through. This can't be called a peaceful protest.”

Source: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2814%2960467-0/fulltext

Unlike corporate-owned mainstream media who has been routinely engaged in a corporate propaganda campaign to market the violence in Venezuela to Americans who normally do not care about the country as a "peaceful protest", this article focuses on the medical angle of the problem and how it effects innocents and public servants while having a even-sided balance of the civil insurrection. A medical journal, of all places, is doing a better coverage of the civil insurrection than anyone else in the Western media landscape.

It really tells you something about how much Western Media focuses on readership than the need to know aspect covering multiple angles of a certain event.

One more thing, at 30 people have died indirectly because of the respiratory conditions created by burning trash from the barricades.