Venezuela Resilience System Working Group

Image: People queueing to buy food are prey for thieves in Caracas, capital of Venezuela. Photograph: Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

theguardian.com - May 14th 2016 - Emma Graham-Harrison

Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has declared a state of emergency, hours after US intelligence officials warned that the South American country could be on the brink of disintegration.

The powers Maduro obtains after Friday night’s declaration allow him “to stabilise our country, and confront all the international and national threats against our fatherland in this moment”, the president said, but he did not detail how he intends to use them.

reuters.com - by ALEXANDRA ULMER AND CORINA PONS - March 4, 2016

A fetus whose mother likely had the Zika virus suffered the rare congenital defect known as microcephaly and ultimately died, doctors said on Friday, in the first Venezuelan case linking the infection to damage in babies.

The mosquito-borne virus has been linked to thousands of suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil, and a recent study has suggested the virus may be associated with stillbirths.

The World Health Organization declared Zika an international health emergency on Feb. 1, citing a "strongly suspected" relationship between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly, a condition in which an infant's head is markedly smaller than those of other babies of similar age and gender.

Public health officials say that link is growing stronger with new evidence, but expect it could take years to prove a connection.

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CLICK HERE - Zika First Trimester Infection Linked To Microcephaly Maturín Venezuela

Students block a street as they clash with national guards during a protest against the government in San Cristóbal on Wednesday. Photograph: Reuters

As President Nicolás Maduro tours the world in search of financing, the most conciliatory opposition leader says the time has come to mobilise on the streets

theguardian.com - by Sibylla Brodzinski - January 16, 2015

Even Venezuela’s most conciliatory opposition leader has had enough.

Amid sky-high inflation, an absent president, snaking queues outside supermarkets, and plummeting oil prices, Henrique Capriles said this week that the time was ripe to try to force a change.

“We are in a state of emergency,” he said on Monday. “This is the time to mobilise in the streets.”

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