CARA­CAS, Venezuela—Act­ing Venezuela Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez has thanked Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) coun­tries for their hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing June 24 dou­ble earth­quake that killed thou­sands and left thou­sands more home­less.

Ro­dríguez, while in­spect­ing re­lief sup­plies sent to Venezuela on Tues­day, ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Cari­com lead­ers, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, for sup­port­ing the South Amer­i­can na­tion dur­ing its time of need.

The re­gion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­fort saw 88 con­tain­ers of emer­gency sup­plies, med­ical spe­cial­ists and equip­ment dis­patched to Venezuela. The aid was co­or­di­nat­ed by Guyana and shipped from that coun­try.

Speak­ing through an in­ter­preter, Ro­dríguez said she was deeply moved by the re­sponse from Caribbean coun­tries.

“I am moved be­cause I am among Cari­com coun­tries, coun­tries of our Caribbean, who with great ef­fort co­or­di­nat­ed by Guyana have all sent aid to Venezuela,” she said.

She specif­i­cal­ly thanked the lead­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos, Suri­name, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Be­lize, St Lu­cia, An­tigua and Do­mini­ca for their sup­port.

“Tru­ly, from the bot­tom of my heart, and on be­half of the Venezue­lan peo­ple, I thank you for this sup­port you are pro­vid­ing to our coun­try,” Ro­dríguez said.

She de­scribed the hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance as a demon­stra­tion of the strong bonds of friend­ship, co­op­er­a­tion and sol­i­dar­i­ty that ex­ist among Caribbean na­tions.

“Venezuela is in your hearts, but we know that you are al­so in our hearts be­cause at all times we have main­tained our close ties of friend­ship, co­op­er­a­tion and broth­er­hood,” she said.

Ro­dríguez al­so high­light­ed Haiti’s con­tri­bu­tion to the re­lief ef­fort, not­ing that the coun­try sent 35 doc­tors and a field hos­pi­tal to as­sist earth­quake vic­tims.

“Haiti will al­ways be with Venezuela and Venezuela will al­ways be with Haiti. It is marked in our his­to­ry and with that com­mit­ment to where we come from and who we are as we set our course to­ward the fu­ture,” she said.

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) said the emer­gency re­sponse in Venezuela has now moved in­to an ear­ly re­cov­ery phase, with fo­cus shift­ing to restor­ing es­sen­tial health ser­vices, strength­en­ing re­fer­ral sys­tems and pre­vent­ing sec­ondary pub­lic health crises.

Ac­cord­ing to PA­HO’s lat­est sit­u­a­tion re­port, the earth­quakes killed 4,333 peo­ple, in­jured 16,740, dis­placed 17,907 and dam­aged 38 health fa­cil­i­ties.

PA­HO said while emer­gency med­ical care and rapid as­sess­ments were crit­i­cal in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the dis­as­ter, the cur­rent pri­or­i­ty is restor­ing health ser­vices, re­pair­ing dam­aged fa­cil­i­ties and en­sur­ing con­tin­ued ac­cess to es­sen­tial care.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion con­tin­ues to sup­port Venezuela’s Min­istry of Health through tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance and co­or­di­na­tion of the Health Clus­ter, which in­cludes 110 or­gan­i­sa­tions in­volved in the re­sponse and is joint­ly led by PA­HO and the In­ter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee. (CMC)