A/HRC/41/18/Add.1 in Venezuela.9 During these visits the OHCHR could witness the wide availability of food, leaving no empirical support for the claims contained within paragraph 14 of the report. 22. In paragraphs 16 through 20, the report evaluates the situation of the right to health based on interviews principally held outside of Venezuela. This analysis is erroneous as it omits information gathered directly by OHCHR staff during its visit to the country, as well as data given by the State to this office and the impact created by the unilateral coercive measures. 23. During the mission to Venezuela held in March 2019, the OHCHR visited three public health care establishments (supra 8). In these visits, OHCHR staff was able to directly assess that the situation of these establishments did not correspond to the diagnosis made in the report A/HRC/41/18. The OHCHR accessed emergency rooms, medicine storeroom, dialysis rooms, hospitalization areas, and imagining centers, among other spaces, thereby ascertaining that care provided ad real levels of availability of equipment, inputs and medicines, as well as staff. 24. Similarly, the Government informed the OHCHR10 that 29,057 comprehensive community doctors graduated between 2011 and 2019; these were trained according to the principles of primary health care and are joined by approximately 2,000 per year who graduate as medical surgeons. Likewise, it was noted that between 2015 and 2019, the Ministry of People’s Power for Health registered new staff consisting of 128,324 professionals in diverse areas, including 30,841 with nursing degrees and 21,968 medical surgeons. 25. In paragraph 17 the report refers to a resurgence of previously controlled and eradicated diseases. Nevertheless, it omits information provided by the Government in response to the questionnaire sent by the OHCHR relating to the absolute control of the Zika arbovirus since 2017. After reporting 2,370 confirmed cases in 2016, Venezuela ended 2018 without a single confirmed case of Zika. 26. In paragraph 18, the report indicates that there was an alleged increase in the rate of maternal mortality. This is mistaken given that according to official information, between 2016 and 2018 the maternal mortality rate fell 13.76 points. 27. In paragraph 19, the report affirms that 20 thousand children “will die as a direct consequence of the crisis.” This assertion has no technical basis to support it and affects the credibility of the report. In any case, if the OHCHR is going to develop its reports using estimates from civil organizations, it should take into account the report made by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), according to which 40,000 Venezuelans have died as a result of the unilateral coercive measures adopted by the Government of the United States of America.11 28. Likewise, paragraph 19 of the report claims that 40 patients died as a result of “power outages.” This contention is not the case, as during the electric sabotage that occurred in 2019, no loss of human life was registered that can be attributed to a lack of electricity. The immense majority of the country’s hospital had backup power generators. In the health care centers that had no backup generators or that had backup failures, a contingency plan was successfully activated. 29. In the cases of patients who receive dialysis in private centers with no backup generators, the State proceeded to relocate those patients to public health centers. Furthermore, electric generators were provided to private centers free of charge. In any case, from a medical point of view it is unsustainable to claim that the loss of a dialysis session can be the cause of a patient’s death. It is worth noting that patients receive 3 dialysis sessions per week. 9 10 11 The OHCHR visited two food retail establishments located in the state of Lara. One of those establishments, a public one, is located in a working-class area of the state and the other, a private one, in a middle class area. Response to the questionnaire sent by the OHCHR as a follow-up to its visit to Venezuela. Available at http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/venezuela-sanctions-2019-04.pdf 5