Aid groups warned Tues­day that Venezuela’s frag­ile health­care sys­tem is be­ing pushed to its lim­its near­ly a week af­ter two pow­er­ful earth­quakes, with dam­aged and un­der­staffed hos­pi­tals over­whelmed by the in­jured and de­te­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tions in the dis­as­ter zone caus­ing in­fec­tious dis­eases to spread.

The scores of in­ter­na­tion­al and do­mes­tic teams across Venezuela re­main fo­cused on the search for sur­vivors, with the gov­ern­ment death toll sur­pass­ing 1,700 and new bod­ies still be­ing hauled out from the rub­ble.

But a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis is al­ready un­fold­ing among the liv­ing. Unit­ed Na­tions agen­cies ex­pressed con­cern about the health ef­fects of thou­sands of dis­placed peo­ple sleep­ing for days in the open or in crowd­ed, un­san­i­tary shel­ters.