Venezuela: With No Ambulances or Taxis Available, Woman Gives Birth on Sidewalk

A woman gave birth to her baby on the sidewalk in northern Venezuela on Sunday while waiting for potential transportation to a hospital that never arrived.

Since the implementation of a coronavirus quarantine in Venezuela on March 16, a preexisting fuel shortage throughout the country has worsened, causing a transportation scarcity.

The unusual birth took place on April 26 in Maracaibo, Zulia state, the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional reported on Monday. In the absence of a hospital ambulance, the woman was waiting for a private vehicle to take her to a medical facility. The woman gave birth before the alternate transportation could arrive. Firefighters from a nearby fire station assisted the woman during her labor.

“While waiting for a vehicle to transport her (there was no ambulance available) [to a hospital], this woman gave birth right on the sidewalk. There was no time for her to be admitted to [a nearby] Maracaibo fire station; They [the firefighters] attended to her, and despite the precariousness of the situation, a mother’s happiness was born. [We] commend the firefighters,” wrote Venezuelan journalist Madelyn Palmar, documenting the birth on Twitter.

Palmar included a video in her Twitter post of the mother still lying on the pavement, moments after giving birth; she is surrounded by three firefighters who support her and the newborn.

Venezuela has been suffering through dire fuel shortages due to decades of socialist mismanagement of the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), at the hands of socialist leadership. On April 14, videos of immense crowds gathering to buy fuel rations in Carabobo surfaced online.

Venezuela’s socialist dictator and illegitimate ruler, Nicolás Maduro, placed the country under a mandatory quarantine on March 16 in a bid to slow the spread of coronavirus. Many citizens have refused to follow the physical distancing restrictions. Many have gathered to protest the fuel shortages; others have been crowding bread lines to try to buy food during newly limited hours, ironically designed to encourage physical distancing during the quarantine.

Since January 2019, the legitimate president of Venezuela has been Juan Guaidó, not Maduro. However, as with the quarantine measures, few Venezuelans follow either ruler, according to a recent survey. It revealed that more Venezuelans identify their head of state as “nobody” than Guaidó.