Samaritan's Purse opened its Emergency Field Hospital in La Guaira, Venezuela, this week as the organization responds to back-to-back earthquakes that killed more than 1,700 people and left nearly 50,000 missing.
The facility is equipped with two operating rooms, 56 patient beds, a critical care unit, pharmacy and laboratory. It now serves as a medical operations center for a region where standard healthcare infrastructure has been overwhelmed and, in many cases, destroyed.
"Hundreds of buildings have collapsed, thousands are damaged and tens of thousands of people are still unaccounted for," Franklin Graham, president of the North Carolina-based organization, said in a statement. Casualty figures remain preliminary as rescue teams continue moving deeper into affected areas.
Samaritan's Purse has stationed more than 40 Disaster Assistance Response Team members on the ground, with additional personnel arriving daily. The organization has airlifted 98 tons of relief supplies, including shelter materials, blankets and hygiene kits, and established multiple water filtration units to address contaminated water sources and waterborne disease.
The field hospital is designed to provide surgical capacity focused on trauma care, treating crush injuries, open fractures and other injuries typical of structural collapse scenarios.
The organization said it plans to sustain operations for an extended period, using its cargo capacity to continue delivering supplies. Samaritan's Purse combines immediate medical response with material relief distribution, indicating the crisis will require weeks or months of intensive support.
For Venezuelan communities already strained by economic hardship and limited access to medical care, the field hospital addresses the acute surgical emergency. However, the longer-term question of how medical infrastructure will be rebuilt remains open. Relief organizations will need to coordinate with local authorities and begin thinking through the reconstruction process.
