More than 3,500 people have died after a pair of earthquakes struck Venezuela last week, while nearly 18,000 remain homeless. Lawmaker Jorge Rodriguez said Monday that the latest official tally showed 16,740 people injured and 17,854 left without housing. At least 12,800 people were staying in 80 shelters across Caracas and La Guaira.

In La Guaira on Monday, witnesses told Reuters they saw trucks and forensic workers transporting coffins while machinery dug trenches in an open area marked by white crosses where authorities were burying bodies.

The June 24 earthquakes, measuring magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, struck within seconds of each other in and around Caracas and La Guaira. An estimated 60,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.

Experts have also warned of a widening health crisis as thousands of displaced Venezuelans sleep in crowded temporary shelters or outside without access to clean water. Thousands have untreated injuries and infectious diseases, with the country’s healthcare system struggling to cope.

“The issue we foresee just around the corner is the infections that patients who have been exposed to the disaster for the longest time might bring,” Eugenio Cova, head of the trauma unit at Hospital Jose Gregorio Hernandez in Caracas, said last week. “We’ve already gone through a period of complex trauma, which will continue to occur, but now, it’s complicated by infections,” Cova added.

Reports of health concerns are already on the rise. “There’s been lots of reports among the population here with diarrhoea and other diseases,” said Al Jazeera’s correspondent Teresa Bo, reporting from a shelter site in La Guaira. “They’re asking, for example, for portable toilets, and also help from the government to try to reorganise this place to try to prevent overcrowding, but also the spread of disease,” Bo said.

Frustration about the government’s rescue and recovery efforts has led to everyday citizens taking charge to find survivors and distribute aid. Carolina Jimenez, president of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told Al Jazeera that the result has been growing anger towards the state. “In a government in any other country, the first responder should be the state. In the case of Venezuela, the state has been the last responder,” she said. In places like Catia la Mar, north of Caracas, authorities still haven’t arrived or are lacking. “The response has come from citizens, from civil society, from humanitarian workers, from volunteers – but not from the government,” Jimenez said.

Source: www.aljazeera.com