After hearing the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the observations of the State of Venezuela, organizations defending the human rights of women and health personnel from the Maternidad Concepción Palacios, demand that the Ministry of Popular Power for the Health (MPPS) of Venezuela to publish the maternal mortality figures that since 2016 stopped presenting.

For three years there has been no access to official data on maternal mortality, which is in itself a violation of human rights. The last public figure that was known in May 2017, included in the MPPS Epidemiological Bulletin, indicated that only in the period 2015 and 2016 maternal mortality had increased by 66 percent. That is why it is irresponsible for the authorities to affirm just now that it has decreased when the documentation carried out by the organizations that defend the rights of women in Venezuela points to an increase in the numbers, a situation that is worsening in the current context of humanitarian emergency. who lives in the country

Only in the Maternidad Concepción Palacios de Caracas, an emblematic maternal and child care center and national reference, four female patients died in the period between March 19 and May 9, 2019. And throughout 2018 the Organizations that obtained urgent protection measures for this Maternity* managed to document the death of 15 women in this public hospital alone. This information was reported by the organizations in May, during a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The risk situation that women face today has not changed. The only elevator that worked for the transfer of patients to the upper floors, where practically all the services are, has not been working for a week. Patients recently operated on, those with urinary infections and gynecological bleeding are going up the stairs because that, or going up the garbage elevator, are the only alternatives that the management of the public hospital has offered after the constant claims of the staff of Health.

Public health statistics are vital to understand the problems that a population is facing and to offer solutions tailored to their needs. In the midst of the complex humanitarian emergency that Venezuela is currently experiencing, it is essential to know the reality of maternal mortality and morbidity in the country in order to adequately direct humanitarian assistance and, in this way, prevent more women from facing the dilemma of exposing themselves to risks in the country's maternity hospitals or migrating in search of better health options for themselves and their newborns.

In this sense, the organizations that signed this statement demand that the recommendation issued in the report of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights be complied with so that "comprehensive data on health and nutrition be published regularly, broken down by sex, age, ethnicity and place of residence, which may be used, among other purposes, to design and apply a comprehensive humanitarian response to the crisis" and to "authorize free access to information of public interest".

To read more go to cepaz.org