Venezuela Earthquakes: Children Pulled from Rubble of Collapsed Buildings Led Experienced Doctor to Leave Profession

Following the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela on 24 Haziran, an experienced emergency pediatrician based in Caracas recounted the traumatic experiences she endured to the BBC. Working for six days straight to treat dozens of children pulled from the rubble, the physician confessed she is on the verge of quitting her profession due to the immense burden of the suffering she witnessed. Asking to remain anonymous, the doctor expressed her internal devastation, saying, "Sometimes I say I no longer want to be a pediatrician. The look in those children's eyes never leaves your mind." The official emphasized that despite personally intervening in numerous massive crises throughout her 34-year career, such as El Caracazo, the Vargas disaster, and the COVID-19 pandemic, she had never encountered a scene akin to the chaos she witnessed during these earthquakes. This situation highlights how the psychological and physical burden on doctors can become overwhelmingly heavy, even during a regional disaster.

In the first hours of the earthquake, the condition of the children arriving at the emergency room painted a relatively different picture compared to the later hours. This first group of children, rescued by their parents from the ruins of collapsed buildings, were crying and screaming in agony due to the impact of the severe blows and trauma they had suffered. However, as hours passed and rescue efforts deepened, the cases reaching the hospital began to take a much more critical and heartbreaking turn. Children who had been trapped under the rubble for extended periods faced severe health issues caused by toxins from crushed muscle tissue entering their bloodstream. These critical cases were patients at the highest risk of life-threatening conditions, including kidney failure and shock.

The children arriving in this second and much heavier wave responded very differently and more terrifyingly than the first ones. The children screaming or crying out in pain had been replaced by unconscious, unidentified little ones without any relatives by their side. The doctor describes this devastating scene, saying, "The condition of the patients arriving by ambulance was in complete chaos; transport conditions were so chaotic that an IV line couldn't even be opened, and standard medical intervention couldn't be administered before they reached the hospital." Seeing children, whom rescue teams had joyfully saved, either lose their lives upon reaching the hospital or struggle with severe physical damage is one of the most unbearable moments for healthcare workers. Consequences such as amputated limbs or irreversible kidney damage not only darken the children's future but also plunge the physicians tasked with caring for them into deep despair.

The situation that wore the veteran physician down the most and distanced her from her profession is an unbearable silence and the children's need for their parents. Little patients, whether regaining consciousness or suffering in pain, asking healthcare workers for their mothers and fathers present doctors with the agonizing difficulty of giving an answer where words fall short. Knowing that some of the children's parents had lost their lives that day, but being unable to tell them this devastating truth out of sheer helplessness, has become the heaviest burden on the pediatrician's shoulders. With a trembling voice and tearful eyes, the physician notes that hiding this uncertainty and truth is not a directive from the government or clinical management, but a direct human tragedy that breaks the heart. The inability to tell the truth and the ability to find pain even in the face of a child's survival constitute one of the darkest and most overlooked aspects of disasters.

These massive earthquakes, with La Guaira province being the most affected area, did not only destroy buildings and infrastructure but also inflicted shocking psychological wounds on healthcare workers. The events bring to the forefront how vital it is during disasters to provide not only physical treatment but also mental support to both severely traumatized patients and the first-response teams trying to rescue them. Furthermore, the lack of preparedness of hospitals in earthquake zones for such mass casualty incidents, the inadequacy of transportation networks, and the vulnerabilities of pre-hospital emergency care during crises have once again surfaced. A doctor considering leaving a profession entered solely to bring children back to life after such a devastating experience also reveals the gaps in extraordinary emergency management. These tragic events in Venezuela invite both regional state authorities and international health organizations to reassess disaster response protocols and take steps to enhance the resilience of healthcare workers.