Facts of the day
Katy says: Did you know that, according to Prof. Marino González of Simón Bolívar University, the total spending on weapons Chávez has announced in the last year and a half (more than US$3 billion) is equivalent to a year and a half’s worth of the budget assigned to the Ministry of Health?
Did you know that, according to the same source, 57,607 children between the ages of 0 and 1 died between 1999 and 2004?
Did you know that roughly 80% of these deaths (or 46,086) were preventable?
46 thousand Venezuelan babies have died during this administration because their families lived in deplorable conditions. Their parents’ education probably did not reach third grade. Their houses did not have basic services such as sewage or running water. Medical attention before or during childbirth was probably inadequate, and pediatric care was probably not available to them.
Of the 7,400 children between 0 and 1 who died in 2004, more than 2,000 of them died due to complications from childbirth, complications that could have been prevented with greater control during the pregnancy. 986 of these children died due to generalized infections, probably due to lack of access to antibiotics. 686 died due to diarrhea. 300 of these children died of infant malnutrition.
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