Sr. Ljilja has been in Venezuela for 10 months. The situation with COVID-19 is getting worse each day. People die every day. Hospitals have no respirators and necessary medicines, but also there are no the most basic means that make a hospital a hospital. Surgeons do not have surgical suits, gloves and disinfectants, antibiotics, anaesthetics.
Neighbours, beneficiaries of Zdenac's help, die every day and new ones come to the lists. You look at them, you sympathize with their suffering and the suffering of their loved ones, and you can’t feed and heal them all.
Once again, a big THANK YOU to everyone who helped and is helping them, to all the people of good heart, for feeding the poor.
It is a hard torment to watch their misery and suffering.
The situation is bad all over Venezuela. There is no food. We understand the COVID-19 situation, but not that, in the 21st century, people are dying of hunger and loneliness. I am conveying to you the life situation from Caracas, Venezuela.
Horror in Venezuela
Two elderly people were found dead from malnutrition in their apartment in Caracas.
These were brother and sister Silvia Margarita Sandoval Armas (72) and Rafael David Sandoval Armas (73). Neighbours called the fire department when they realized they were not responding to their calls.
The crisis in Venezuela has hit the most vulnerable again. This time, the elderly (prevented from emigrating or waiting in long lines to get food) paid for the consequences of Nicolás Maduro’s policies and regime.
Last Monday a Brother and sister, Rafael David and Silvia Margarita, were found dead and in a state of disintegration in an apartment they shared in Caracas.
Tenants of the building on the 9th floor in the Puente Hierro neighbourhood, where the brother and sister lived alone, alerted firefighters.
They lived and depended on the food given to them by their neighbours. Mrs Sylvia had a pension from which she could buy two kilograms of rice.
According to user reports on social media, when neighbours reported that they knew nothing about them and did not answer their calls, the capital's firefighters used the rappelling technique to enter the apartment.
Neighbours from the place added that they began to feel the stench coming from the apartment.
According to information circulating in the local media, Sylvia's date of death was 36 to 48 hours at the time of the discovery, while Raphael's was between 24 and 36 hours. The woman's body was in the kitchen and the man’s in the room.
The data suggest that the man could have been alive with his dead sister for some time, without seeking help.
The deceased had protein-calorie malnutrition.
Their situation is no exception. As a result of the wave of emigration that Venezuela is going through, older people are affected by the complete or partial abandonment of relatives, which makes it difficult and impossible for them to continue independence and makes them even more vulnerable to the economic crisis that is shaking the country.
Lack of basic products and medicines, galloping inflation, economic instability, high crime rates and violence that the oil country has, do not go unnoticed by the elderly.
Sr. Ljilja Lončar
The Missionary of Mercy
