The death toll from the June 24 twin earthquakes in Venezuela has reached 2,595 with 12,000 injured and 38,500 missing. Although there are now 50 international rescue teams on the ground, having arrived with specialized equipment, trained personnel and medicine, more continue to arrive—some not only from governments and international agencies but from individual provinces within nations. The Trump administration is playing up the fact that the U.S. Southern Command has deployed 900 military members, including civilian and military logistics teams to assist with humanitarian efforts –after having imposed 1,000 sanctions on Venezuela over the past decade which gutted its economy and infrastructure, The Washington Post reported. However, troops did immediately repair one damaged runway at the Simon Bolivar international airport facilitating arrival of humanitarian aid.
Spirits were lifted over the past two days when Venezuelan Hernan Gil was rescued July 2 after eight days under the rubble by members of seven international teams. And a toddler was rescued alive after eight days under the rubble in La Guaira. But the rescue tasks ahead are monumental in a situation that has been described as a “war zone” or something akin to Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
An immediate danger is that infectious diseases that have already appeared will spread rapidly in crowded unsanitary conditions. UN agencies, the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization and others warn that crowded makeshift camps with unsanitary conditions lack access to clean water, and many of their inhabitants have untreated injuries. Even hospitals that are open, such as those in hard hit La Guaira, are overcrowded, suffering from shortages of instruments or non-functional ones and frequent power outages. WHO s Christian Lindmeier, spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) [was quoted on the Voice of Vietnam website](https://vovworld.vn/news/who-warns-of-multiple-disease-outbreak-risks-after-venezuela-earthquakes-2447047.vov5 ) warning of the spread of “vaccine-preventable” diseases such as measles and diphtheria, noting that administration of vaccines in Venezuela had been significantly reduced well before the earthquakes.
[Al Jazeera quoted Eugenio Cova]( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/2/a-war-zone-venezuela-aid-workers-fear-health-crisis-after-earthquakes) head of the trauma unit at the Jose Gregorio Hernandez hospital in Caracas, warning that the healthcare system “is on the brink of collapse. 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. We’ve already gone through a period of complex trauma—which will continue to occur—but now, it’s complicated by infections.” Diarrhea and related diseases are being reported in La Guaira.
Venezuela’s political opposition, led by the egregious U.S.-based Maria Corina Machado, continues to spew out propaganda that acting President Delcy Rodriguez is obstructing humanitarian operations, deliberately preventing families and rescue workers from accessing affected areas and vastly undercounting the number of dead. The UN’s coordinator for Venezuela Gianluca Rampolla, who is in Caracas, challenges these accusations, responding that there are “absolutely no obstacles to accessing humanitarian aid.” Moreover, he said, the UN is present at the official data center and he has full confidence in the data released. The charge that the government is deliberately downplaying the death toll is absurd. Given the magnitude of the destruction, rescue operations are arduous and require large amounts of manpower. No one denies that tens of thousands are buried beneath the rubble and the work of search and rescue workers is considered to be heroic.
