A Deadly Game of Childbirth “Roulette”

Laboring women in Venezuela are forced to travel from hospital to hospital in a cruel game of “roulette,” desperate to find a facility equipped to deliver their baby. If that doesn’t happen in time, they deliver on the street or in facility lobbies—mothers and babies have died in the process.
 
With the country’s economy and health system in freefall, some 30,000 physicians have fled the country and maternal deaths are skyrocketing in tandem.
 
Desperate mothers-to-be are fleeing, too—to neighboring Colombia, where the government has promised Venezuelans care. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, that journey to Colombia’s already-overwhelmed hospitals is increasingly risky.
 
The New York Times