I know some of us are interested in what goes on in the area surrounding Aruba.

Found this interesting article on oil rich Venezuela:
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10870071&f

It will make you scratch your head and wonder where all of their oil profits are going if they cannot get fresh bread, inflation is 20% and health care consists of 5 babies sharing an incubator and doctors using cardboard for splints.

Aruba Bound! ~ Hoosier Kitties ~ Our-Cruises ~ Blogging to Aruba
Back to paradise Trip #18

And this is were they airlift cardiac patients from Aruba.

Aruba Trip Reports

"The authorities dismiss these stories as part of a media campaign to destabilise the government. But it is impossible to disguise the collapsing infrastructure or prevent the doctors from talking, even though hospital administrators do their best to keep the press at bay.

The medical federation says 2,000 doctors have left the country in the past four years. That’s not surprising when you consider that a monthly salary for a full-time doctor in a public hospital is less than $400.

The government’s policy has been to set up a parallel system from the ground up—starting with primary health-care modules in poor barrios, staffed mainly by Cuban doctors—and to train thousands of Venezuelans in Cuban-style general medicine, graduating them in record time.

But more than half of the modules are no longer staffed, and the total built is less than a third of the target figure. Even if they were all operational, that only amounts to the equivalent of one for every barrio in the capital alone. The fact that primary health-care remains precarious can be seen in the marked upswing in recent months of epidemics like dengue, and even the highly unpleasant (and incurable) Chagas disease."

I think I would rather take my chances in Aruba...

Aruba Bound! ~ Hoosier Kitties ~ Our-Cruises ~ Blogging to Aruba
Back to paradise Trip #18

Not an option as there is no cath lab nor cardio surgery in Aruba. The bottom line of this, for me, is that we won't be going to Aruba anymore. (I had mistakenly figured that one would be airlifted to Curacao. Not so.)

Aruba Trip Reports