AMERICA/VENEZUELA - Medicine to save lives: guaranteeing everyone the right to health and access to medicines

Thursday, 18 February 2021 human rights   healthcare   poverty   episcopal conferences   caritas  

Caracas (Agenzia Fides) - For more than forty years, through the Sharing Campaign called Compartir, the Bishops' Conference of Venezuela and Caritas of Venezuela have invited the country to help the poorest and most vulnerable during Lent through concrete action of solidarity, as the Good Samaritan helped the wounded of injustice, indifference, loneliness and despair in Venezuela today. For 2021, the Bishops have decided that the Campaign highlights the importance of universal access to medicines to protect the right to health of all Venezuelans. Covid-19 is not the only disease affecting the country, as 90% of Venezuelans live in a situation of poverty, and the number of people with complications of their illnesses due to a lack of medicines is also increasing.
According to the indications released by the Episcopal Conference, sent to Fides, the concrete gesture will consist in strengthening the various programs of the Church in this sector, in particular the parish banks of medicines in order to help the needy to obtain the medicines they need to maintain or to recover one's health, or even to save one's life. Such attention, underlines the note, is the expression of a poor Church for the poor who, in her missionary journey, shows all her children, and in particular the most needy, the merciful face of the Father.
Caritas Venezuela, responsible for leading the Lenten campaign, warned that one of the main attacks on the dignity and lives of Venezuelans is the growing difficulty in accessing essential medicines, medical-surgical products and biosecurity devices. Thanks to the Campaign, those who suffer from this situation are placed at the center of solidarity action, besides asking the authorities to guarantee the flow of humanitarian aid and to promote urgent structural changes in Venezuela in order to overcome poverty, violence, exclusion and disease.
In this time of Lent, Caritas Venezuela will strengthen, through the diocesan and parish Caritas, the community medicine banks with the contribution and donations of civil society and of those who wish to join this work for the good of those who otherwise cannot access the treatment of their health problems. Through social networks and the website, it is possible for those who would like to make their contribution, practical information as well as subsidies and in-depth material intended to accompany the whole of Lent. (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 18/2/2021)


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