EspañolThe eight year old whose image went viral several months ago after participating in a protest against Venezuela’s drug shortages died recently after he was unable to receive the medicine he needed.
“I want to get better, peace and health,” Sanchez’s sign read during a demonstration, which made him the face of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis turned Venezuela.
Oliver Sanchez was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma just over a year ago, but shortages of medicines needed for treatment led him and his family to participate in the demonstration.
“We are in a desperate situation,” his mother Mitzaida Berroterán said at the time.
Sanchez’s cousin Ricardo Lobo told the newspaper Efecto Cocuyo that at the time, the child “asked for paper and a pencil and wrote the sign.”
Lobo said that what little medical care they could get ended up being by donation.
Last week, Sanchez’s condition, affected by a respiratory infection, landed him in the Hospital Dr. Elias Toro in Caracas; however, there wasn’t an available bed for him.
The neighbor of the Sanchez family Esperanza Hermida said he had to get the money to move Oliver to a clinic, where he later died.
“His mother took him to the clinic, Hermida said. “It’s very hard. I was crying while talking about his case.”
Source: Efecto Cocuyo