THE failing state of hospitals in Venezuela has been revealed in a series of horrific photographs.

Shocking pictures show patients lying in squalor, with few working pieces of equipment and a lack of drugs.

But socialist president Nicholas Maduro claims that the country’s healthcare system is the second best in the world.

Venezuela’s economy has been in free fall after the price of oil fell in January.

The economic downturn has caused inflation to continue to rise in the South American country.

This means that the country’s hospitals cannot afford to be properly stocked with equipment and medicine.

Pictures taken by the New York Times’ Meredith Kohut reveal the crisis in Venezuela’s hospitals.

She was allowed to take photographs in the Luis Razetti Hospital in Barcelona.

Over the day of her visit, seven babies died.

Dr Osleidy Camejo said: “The death of a baby is our daily bread.”

In operating rooms, patients wait for hours on bloodied beds.

Hospitals in Venezuela often don’t have enough water to be able to clean the operating tables between surgeries.

Surgeons clean their own hands with bottles of carbonated water.

The hospital has no working X-ray or kidney dialysis machines.

Some people have to wait for days on end because the right equipment isn’t at the hospital.

Dr Christian Pino said: “It is like something from the 19th century.”

Dr Leandro Pérez said: “Some come here healthy, and they leave dead.”

Yet in the face of these horrific images, president Maduro maintains that the healthcare service is thriving.

He said: “I doubt that anywhere in the world, except in Cuba, there exists a better health system than this one.”

In April, the hospital director, Aquiles Martínez, was arrested for allegedly stealing equipment and medicine.

By the evening, halls have become makeshift wards for patients.

They have run out of paper, soap and antibiotics.

Most of the critical drugs needed to save lives are only available on the black market.

A sign in one of the wards reads: “We sell antibiotics — negotiable,” displaying a number for a black-market seller.

When the hospital experiences power cuts, the generator doesn’t work, so patients are submerged in darkness.

The failing hospital even has a room full of broken and smashed incubators.

Doctors often have to pump air into the babies by hand until they are too exhausted to see.

This article originally appeared on The Sun.