Mayra Linares, a 40-year-old sickle-cell anemia patient at Caracas University Hospital, waited for 10 days until she got one of three units of blood she needed in February. Her mother brought in her bedsheets and paid for medical instruments. (Rachelle Krygier for The Washington Post) CARACAS, Venezuela — In Venezuela, getting sick has never been more deadly. Medicines from antibiotics to chemotherapy drugs have become increasingly scarce in recent years. Public hospitals ask patients’ families to supply bedsheets and syringes. HIV patients have gone months without their drugs , and transplant patients have died without the immunosuppressants they need after surgery. But the country is now experiencing a crisis in one of the most basic medical necessities: blood. Lower oil prices and populist policies championed by the late Hugo Chávez and continued by his successor, President Nicolás Maduro , have plunged Venezuela into a spiraling economic emergency . The […]