The Venezuelan government has initiated its policy of expanding social programs in the country’s most deprived areas in a bid to eradicate extreme poverty.
Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro has announced a series of reforms to the system of state-run social programs, known as “missions”, in order to improve their reach and performance.
Following his election victory last Sunday against the MUD rightwing coalition candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, newly re-elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave his first press conference on Tuesday outlining his thoughts on the election and national and foreign policy issues.
British activist and journalist, Jody McIntyre, shares his impressions of a mass march held in favour of the government's social missions last Saturday in Caracas.
Mission Culture, a social program that aims to transform cultural education in Venezuela, celebrated its seventh anniversary on Tuesday. The program was created on July 10, 2005, by the government of President Hugo Chávez, and since then it has trained over 12,000 people in different areas of the arts to foster a renewal of popular creativity.
Venezuela’s Barrio Adentro Health Mission now involves 12,898 Cuban and Venezuelan doctors, 4,595 dentists, 7,772 nurses, 6702 community medical surgeries, 551 medical diagnostic centres, 580 rehabilitation rooms, 33 high technology centres, and 459 optometrist centres, according to Vice-president Elias Jaua.
The “great social missions” created over the last six months could contribute to reducing the national rate of extreme poverty from 7 to 3.5 percent in the medium term.
During 2011, the state-funded social program known as Mission Miracle performed 199,791 surgeries on patients that were suffering from vision problems, according to statements made by the program’s coordinator Manuel Pacheco on Wednesday.
