Malaria epidemics seize Venezuela

Venezuelan authorities are launching a new drive to combat malaria after infection rates doubled in a year. Once the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela has seen its rates of malaria rise as the regional economic crisis has taken its toll on the country.

Some 21 585 cases of the disease were reported across the country last year, with about 7000 up until the end of May, according to Dr Dario Gonzalez, director of the government's epidemiological vigilance and environmental sanitation unit: “By the same time this year we have already seen nearly twice as many cases. And …