A year of Fernandes transforms Man Utd from pretenders to

A year of Fernandes transforms Man Utd from pretenders to contenders In crisis-hit Venezuela, maternity wards have become death traps

Manchester United may have surrendered top spot in the Premier League with a shock home defeat to bottom-of-the-table Sheffield United, but the fact the Red Devils are even involved in a title race is testament to Bruno Fernandes's first 12 months at Old Trafford.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's men travel to Arsenal on Saturday a year to the day since the Portuguese midfielder joined a side languishing 30 points off the top in fifth place.

Solskjaer's days in charge looked numbered after a toxic response from the home support to a 2-0 defeat to Burnley in United's final league game before Fernandes's arrival.

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In 52 appearances, the 26-year-old has scored 28 goals and provided 18 assists, earning comparisons to Eric Cantona's talismanic turnaround in United's fortunes.

Over the past year, no team has taken more Premier League points than United.

However, Fernandes's impact goes beyond the stats.

For a side badly in need of a leader, the former Sporting Lisbon captain has come to the fore, demanding that others match his standards.

"I don't do anything like saying 'I want to be a leader or I want to do things in a different way to someone', it's the natural way I have. It's something that's in my game," said Fernandes.

"For me the point is helping everyone with my voice when I can and also with my energy and everything I do in the game to help the team."

That has led to on-pitch rebukes of his teammates and frustration at Solskjaer whenever he is substituted or rested.

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But it is also a commitment to excellence has often been missing from United in the eight years since legendary former manager Alex Ferguson retired.

"He's never happy with me when I tell him to go inside after training when he's playing the next day so he got some practice yesterday," said Solskjaer after Fernandes came off the bench to score the winner with a stunning free-kick against Liverpool in the FA Cup last weekend.

"When you leave him out like I did today, he stayed about 45 minutes after training yesterday shooting free-kicks so I was pretty confident he could score one if he got the chance."

The most successful club in English football history when it comes to league titles have not even competed for one since Ferguson's departure.

"My mentality, my way to be in my life and football is about winning," said Fernandes this week.

"I don't conform with losing games is normal stuff. For me, losing is not normal so my mentality comes from that."

United had not suffered defeat in the league for 13 games stretching back to November until they were blunted by the Blades in midweek.

Manchester City have moved into the pole position at the top of the table with an ominous run for the other challengers of 11 consecutive wins in all competitions.

If United are to remain in the race, a return to winning ways is needed at the Emirates on Saturday, where they have lost on their two previous visits under Solskjaer.

Those defeats came prior to Fernandes's arrival. In the past year, United have undoubtedly progressed, but without trophies to show for it.

Solskjaer's men have lost four cup semi-finals in the past two seasons and crashed out of the Champions League at the group stages in December.

"I come to the club because I knew I will come to a club who wants to win everything," Fernandes said on the attraction United still holds for top players.

A four-year drought without any silverware is too long for a club of United's size, but it is thanks to Fernandes they are at least now contenders.

Red roses and a burning candle frame the small white casket Wendy Dulcey is caressing at a hospital morgue in Caracas.

It contains the remains of her baby son who died on December 1, 39 days after he was born -- a cruel fate befalling far too many in the crisis-hit South American country.

With seven years of back-to-back recession and the highest inflation in the world, Venezuela's hospitals are creaking skeletons of their former selves, with a critical shortage of doctors and nursing personnel, surgical equipment and medicine.

According to the latest official figures available, infant mortality in Venezuela increased almost a third in 2016 from the previous year, to 11,466 deaths among children aged zero to one.

Maternal mortality in the country of some 30 million people soared by 65 percent in the same period -- a tragedy that began building long before the coronavirus pandemic.

Dulcey nurses her still-prominent baby bump and says she has no more tears to cry.

She recounts in horrifying detail the days leading up to the death of her son, Thiago, whose body she later spotted in a partly-open fridge among the corpses of other dead children.

The 39-year-old fell ill and was admitted to a hospital in the Venezuelan capital for an emergency C-section at only seven months.

She was shown away by two other maternity hospitals before she was admitted to a clinic she described as having dirty, poorly-lit corridors "full of excrement, blood, garbage."

The lifts did not work, and there were no wheelchairs.

From the moment she arrived, "the only thing I could think about was that we weren't going to make it out of there," she told AFP.

Things soon went from bad to worse.

After little Thiago was born prematurely, Dulcey said staff took a used syringe to insert a feeding tube, which she claimed was never replaced.

- Too small to fight -

Thiago died just weeks later of a bacterial infection, and his distraught mother claims criminal negligence.

"He could not fight on his own," she said.

Dulcey said she almost didn't make it either, having developed uterine bleeding after the birth.

Doctor Jaime Lorenzo of the NGO Doctors United said such experiences were common.

With hospitals short on supplies, patients are often asked to bring their own bedding, gowns, food, basic items such as gauze and bandages, even drugs.

A 2019 survey by HumVenezuela, an NGO documenting the country's humanitarian crisis, found four in ten hospitals had a shortage of basic supplies, and eight out of 10 did not have enough surgical tools or medicine.

The obstetrics wards of half the country's maternity hospitals were partially or fully out of service in 2019, it said.

Thousands of trained doctors and nurses are among the five million Venezuelans estimated to have left the country in recent years in search of a better life elsewhere.

Someone like Dulcey, a public official with an inflation-battered income of less than $1 a month could never even think of giving birth in a private clinic, where better conditions come with a hefty price tag of about $6,000 per delivery.

- 'A matter of luck' -

Nineteen-year-old Briggite Perez said she went through a similar ordeal, having been shown away from five hospitals before being admitted to the one where she finally gave birth on December 26.

After trying to deliver naturally on a rusty bed with no footrest, she was wheeled into the operating room for a cesarian.

Four days after she was discharged -- with her baby -- an infection required Perez to be hospitalized again.

HumVenezuela's 2019 survey found that more than half of women received inadequate obstetric care at Venezuelan public maternity centers.

Vanessa Martinez, 28, had an emergency C-section in her seventh month of pregnancy after an iron supplement prescribed to her caused a surge in blood pressure.

For her, giving birth safely in Venezuela "is a matter of luck".

And considering herself one of the lucky ones, she dreams of nothing more than a "quiet life" with her newborn daughter Samantha, she told AFP at her home in a slum west of Caracas.

According to the World Health Organization, globally about 7,000 newborns die every day, mainly in poor countries, as well as 830 women from "preventable causes due to pregnancy and childbirth".