Venezuela doctors under regime pressure during UN visit

Venezuelan doctors have come under pressure from President Nicolas Maduro's government for trying to alert a visiting UN mission about the severe lack of hospital medicine and equipment, NGOs say.

Venezuelan authorities say that US sanctions freezing USD 30 billion in assets have blocked imports of basic items including medicine.

But they have roughly stomped down on dissenting voices saying much of the resulting medical emergency is the fault of mismanagement, the NGOs allege.

"They forcibly booted out the head of a medical school in Maracay (west of Caracas) and since then we haven't heard from her," said Jaime Lorenzo, executive director of one association called Medicos Unidos (Doctors United). "She protested against the repression of medical staff," he said.

An opposition lawmaker, Jose Manuel Olivares, who is also an oncologist and radiotherapist, on Twitter said she was "the third doctor in two weeks to be persecuted for having denounced the situation in the hospitals."
A human rights NGO critical of the government, Provea, slammed "these camouflage operations before the UN mission's arrival," saying the sudden appearance of supplies was "testimony to the government's negligence and cruelty."