imported with private sector hospitals claiming they owe suppliers billions of dollars in order to pay their debts. In early 2015, only 35% of hospital beds were available and 50% of operating rooms could not function due to the lack of resources. In March 2015, a Venezuelan NGO, Red de Médicos por la Salud, reported that there was a 68% shortage of surgical supplies and a 70% shortage of medicines in Venezuelan pharmacies. In May 2015, the Venezuelan Medical Federation said that 15,000 doctors had left the public health care system due to drug and equipment shortages and poor pay. In August 2015 the Human Rights Watch said, “We have rarely seen access to essential medicines deteriorate as quickly as it has in Venezuela except in war zones.” By the end of 2015, the Bolivarian government reported that of all Venezuelans visiting public hospitals that year, one in three patients died. Also in 2015, 30% of all reported malaria cases in the Americas were in Venezuela (more than Brazil, which has a much larger population). In 2016, according to the Venezuelan government, 240,000 cases of malaria were reported, rising 76% in a year. According to former Venezuelan health minister José Félix Oletta, more than 500,000 Venezuelans would contract malaria in 2017. A study of 6,500 households by three of the main universities in Venezuela found that "74% of the population had lost on average nineteen pounds in 2016". In April 2017 Venezuela's health ministry reported that maternal mortality jumped by 65% in 2016 and that the number of infant deaths rose by 30%. It also said that the number of cases of malaria was up by 76%. Shortly after Minister of Health Antonieta Caporale released in 2017 this data, and health statistics showing increases in 2016 infant and maternal mortality and infectious diseases, Maduro fired her and replaced the physician with a pharmacist close to vice-president Tareck El Aissami, Luis López Chejade. The publications were removed from the Ministry's website, and no further health data has been made available, although the government had produced health bulletins for several decades. The ministry had not reported health data in two years, and none has been reported since. In November 2017 the Venezuelan Society of Public Health informed that a total of 857 cases of measles, from which 465 have been confirmed, had been registered. The Pan American Health Organization reported that at