After Venezuela Earthquakes, Direct Relief Supports Medical Deployment in Critical Response Window

As an elite medical team deploys to Venezuela, Direct Relief is mobilizing an emergency grant to support their swift, effective response to Wednesday’s cataclysmic double earthquakes.

The first 72 hours following a disaster are the most critical for both search and rescue and medical intervention. Rescue efforts are most likely to uncover survivors from rubble; doctors are most able to save the lives of grievously injured patients, often working amid the rubble or in makeshift displacement centers.

Medical Impact, a Mexico- and Colombia-based emergency response group with a storied history of responding in this pivotal window, sends mobile medical teams to global disaster settings from Guatemala to Gaza.

Equipped with field medic packs and emergency medicine caches – often provided by Direct Relief – they move through devastated terrain, treat physical trauma, prevent infection, help people purify water for drinking, and prevent people with conditions like asthma, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS from spiraling into medical crisis.

An emergency grant “enables us to jump-start the response so we can start right away,” Dr. Giorgio Franyuti, Medical Impact’s executive director, told Direct Relief during a response to severe flooding in Mexico last October.

Direct Relief also funded the deployment of a Spain-based search-and-rescue organization, Bomberos Unidos Sin Fronteras, with extensive experience responding to this kind of devastation.

The next day’s activity will be critical in Northern Venezuela, where the earthquake toppled about 250 buildings, trapping survivors beneath. The death toll, already in the hundreds, is expected to drastically rise. Finding survivors and providing medical care in the field are the best ways to prevent unnecessary deaths.

Medical Impact’s physician team generally deploys as soon as they receive clearance to do so. Logistical issues are generally resolved ad hoc, in the field, because damaged roads and communication blackouts make it difficult to assess medical needs and high-level strategy from afar.

“We do not know where we’re going to stay, but we have to deploy anyway. It is so time-sensitive, and so critical. We usually resolve [issues like shelter] on the spot,” Dr. Franyuti explained last year.

People trapped under rubble are at severe risk of developing crush syndrome, which can damage muscle tissue and then, once the person is free, release life-threatening toxins into the bloodstream. Wounds will be vulnerable to infection and long-term complications; many chronic conditions will have gone unmanaged since Wednesday.

In Venezuela, where the health system was already severely compromised before this disaster, these concerns take on even greater urgency. Providers working on the ground have noted that medical centers are overwhelmed by the emergent need.

Medical needs in earthquake-affected areas are likely to shift over time, from trauma care and emergency surgery to care for complex medical crises, severe mental health impacts, and interruptions to sanitation, healthcare access, and livelihoods. However, the widespread demand for urgent medical care is likely to remain overwhelmingly high for the foreseeable future. The U.N. estimates that nearly seven million people in Venezuela have been affected. The need for longer-term humanitarian intervention is almost guaranteed.

Direct Relief is currently assessing medical needs and strategic priorities in collaboration with healthcare partners on the ground in Venezuela. The organization’s goal will be to outfit under-resourced hospitals and healthcare workers responding on the ground, filling vital medical supply gaps and supporting the local and regional response.