CARACAS, Venezuela — In the crowded waiting room of the Vargas de Caracas hospital, the walls are decorated with peppy pro-government slogans: “It’s only possible with socialism.”

But the Zika epidemic has struck as the socialist-ruled country is spiraling into economic chaos and the public health system has been stripped of many basic tools of modern medicine. Hospital patients get wheeled past closets overflowing with trash. Stray dogs wander the hospital grounds. Doctors perform surgery without sutures and gauze.

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Lisseth Salas arrived at Vargas de Caracas in a state of partial paralysis, suffering from ­Guillain-Barré syndrome, which has been linked to Zika. Two other hospitals had denied her service — one because it had no neurologists, another because she wasn’t in the military. As she has recovered, Salas has lacked the immunoglobulin treatment her doctors would prefer to use.

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In the Latin American fight against the Zika virus, Venezuela stands apart. While other nations bombard their airwaves with public-service warnings about mosquitoes and publish tallies of new cases, Venezuela has played down the epidemic and choked off information about its spread. For more than a year, President Nicolás Maduro’s government has refused to release its weekly epidemiological bulletin, just as it has hidden statistics on inflation and the homicide rate.