The Venezuelan government is set to implement a medicine-rationing system it hopes will ease shortages that have left many patients unable to treat ailments from hemorrhoids to cancer, USA Today reported.

Under the national Integral System for Access to Medicines (SIAMED) scheme, Venezuelans who wish to buy drugs will be required to register their fingerprints at pharmacies and will only be permitted to acquire limited amounts.

In the midst of the deep crisis of the South American country's economy, scarcities that haunt the local medicine supply have led to tragic consequences for some: There were "allegations of patients dying and doctors even forced to carry out needless mastectomies because they can't access other means to treat breast cancer," the newspaper detailed.

The head of the Venezuelan Pharmaceutical Federation accused President Nicolás Maduro of being responsible for the dire situation. The embattled leader's socialist government has destroyed the national production of drugs, while the lack of foreign currency prevents the import of much-needed pharmaceuticals, Freddy Ceballos added.

"(SIAMED) won't solve the problem because it doesn't get at the cause, which is the lack of supply of medicines," Ceballos argued. "The government won't talk about it, the fact that this appears to be rationing, but everyone else is. We will see how it operates in practice," he added.

But Gabriela Espinoza, the president of the Venezuelan Chamber of Pharmacy, told United Press International that her group supported the new registry.

"We are in the best of spirits to support the guarantee of drugs to such patients nationwide," Espinoza said. "We applaud the initiative of the Ministry of Health to convene ... together to build this system," she added.

New York-based Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, insisted that the situation in Venezuela is dramatic.

The Maduro's administration "has not ensured that the public health care system has what it needs," Diederik Lohman, the organization's associate health and human rights director, wrote in the Washington Post.

"As we document these problems in countries around the world, we have rarely seen access to essential medicines deteriorate as quickly as it has in Venezuela except in war zones," Lohman noted.