Fake Photos of Venezuelan Health Situation on Social Media: AFP

A total of ten pictures which show public health care situation in various parts of Venezuela have been shared through social media in the past months. According to an investigation from the French press agency (AFP), not all of the photos were taken in Venezuela and none of them are recent. This AFP expose adds to a recent flood of articles confirming assertions by the Venezuelan government that they are a victim of a concerted mainstream media and social media effort to show a country in ruins, which is not the case. 

The publication was shared at least 392,000 times on Facebook since February 10, 2019.

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"Discover why it is forbidden to enter any public hospital with a mobile phone or a camera in Venezuela, they keep it from you until you leave the hospital but they do not know that I carried two cell phones and that is why it is possible to spread the information and long live public health in a socialist country and then complain about ours,"said the author of the publication.

The AFP tracked the source of each picture. It turns out that most of the images were not taken in Venezuela or were taken in the country before 2016. 

The AFP indicated that some of the pictures were shared several times from 2014 to 2019. For example, an image taken by a Venezuelan doctor in 2014 in the emergency room of the Miguel Pérez Carreño hospital was shared several times in 2016 as a photo of the situation at the Manuela Sanz hospital.

Still according to the AFP, some of the pictures show facts that happened more than five years ago or witness situation outside Venezuela. It appears that one of the pictures of the Facebook publication was circulating in 2015 as an image of a hospital in the Dominican Republic. 

The AFP concluded that not all the images of the publication were taken in Venezuela and that they reflect the situation in the country before 2016.