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Venezuela is facing a "devastating" health crisis due to the collapse of its public health system, Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that this situation worsens with the proliferation of infectious diseases and complications.
"The combination of a failing health system and widespread food shortages has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe that will only get worse if it is not resolved urgently," said Shannon Doocy , Associate Professor, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.
Several researchers from the NGO, accompanied by specialists from the Center for Humanitarian Health of the University, traveled to Venezuela's borders with Colombia and Brazil to assess the extent of the crisis and know the testimony of people fleeing the country.
The results focused on a radical recovery of malaria and tuberculosis cases, epidemics of diseases such as measles and diphtheria, and a shortage of antiretroviral therapy for people living with HIV.
The worsening of malnutrition, which leads to a proliferation of infectious diseases and complications, is a factor that aggravates the situation, said HRW.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), malaria cases dropped from 36,000 in 2009 to more than 406,000 in 2017; while tuberculosis diagnoses increased from six thousand in 2014 to seven thousand, 800 in 2016, while the incidence rate was 32.4 per 100,000 population, the highest rate in the country for 40 years.
Lack of supplies for drugs and vaccines has affected treatments such as HIV, as 87% of the more than 79,000 people registered as carriers of HIV do not receive antiretroviral drugs.
The shortage of vaccines has also resulted in the return of two diseases considered as extinct: diphtheria and measles, of which no recent cases have been known until 2015.
Human Rights Watch mentions high rates of malnutrition as being the major factor behind the worsening of most diseases.
In its report, the international human rights organization criticized the reaction of the government of President Nicolás Maduro to deny the situation and not to deal with it "urgently".
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