Beyond a Collapsed Health System
Venezuela’s Political Transition and the Question of Health

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On January 3, a US military operation detained Nicolás Maduro. President Trump said the US government would run Venezuela for a period. A shock ran across the region. In response, The Lancet has published a run of articles in 2026 on Venezuela's health system. The question narrows to one thing. Will a forced change of government rebuild a broken health system, or push the most vulnerable further down?

The collapse came from political choices, one on top of another

The Lancet places the collapse of Venezuela's health system where it belongs: in the political corruption and economic mismanagement that followed the Chávez government (1999–2013). The state stopped publishing epidemiological data in 2016. In 2017 the health minister released figures showing rising infant mortality and a surge in infectious disease, was dismissed by Maduro soon after, and the data was reportedly pulled from the official gazette.

The reported numbers are heavy. Malaria cases in 2017 passed 410,000, said to be the largest increase anywhere that year. Tuberculosis incidence had reached a 40-year high as of 2015. More than 20 million Venezuelans live in poverty, and food and medicine are still chronically short.

The people who run the health system are gone

One structural problem is that tens of thousands of health professionals left the country. Seeking a wage they could live on, doctors, nurses and pharmacists alike went to Colombia and the southern cone. The facilities they left behind lack power and drugs, and the equipment is aging. Even when the political transition begins, the people will not come back quickly.

For people with disabilities and chronic conditions, this weighs the most. Dialysis, insulin and antiepileptic drugs stay hard to get. A change of government does not make supply better by morning.

The shape of the government decides the health of the people

The Lancet's position is plain. Rebuilding Venezuela's health system requires restoring social trust and steady investment in primary care. Occupation-style rule imposed from outside tends to add disruption in the short term. And the first to pay are the rural areas, Indigenous regions and low-income groups that already had the thinnest access. PAHO and NGOs are calling for an early assessment of the health system and for humanitarian aid to be secured. Among researchers, a view is spreading that reopening the data the state had hidden, restoring that transparency, is where technical support has to start.

Dialysis and insulin do not return to the shelf the morning after a government falls. Rebuilding care takes longer than changing the government.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.