The Venezuelan people are experiencing a serious humanitarian crisis. The poverty rate rose to 87% in 2017 from 48% in 2014, and 61% of Venezuelans now suffer from chronic poverty.

On December 3 2017, a baby of just eight months died in the Dr. Egor Nucete Hospital of severe malnutrition. The baby had pellagra, a skin disease caused by deficiency of niacin. Niacin is a vitamin found in foods such as red meat, milk and eggs. Two days before, 3-year-old Gilberto Mendoza died from complications derived from malnutrition and pneumonia. On December 6, Johan Fajardo, a 13-year-old teenager from Guanare weighing a mere 11 kilos died in Dr. Miguel Oraa Hospital.

Even for those who survive the effects will still be severe. Malnutrition in young children can stunt development. Some 33% of Venezuelan children are already experiencing a delay in growth. The effects are irreversible and will affect them for life.

The New York Times investigated in 21 public hospitals across the country over a five-month period ending in December 2017. The investigation identified roughly 2,800 cases of child malnutrition and a consequent 400 deaths.  Dr. Milagros Hernández, a doctor at a children’s hospital in the northern city of Barquisimeto, said that “sometimes they die in your arms just from dehydration”. According to Dr. Ingrid Soto de Sanabria, the chief of the hospital’s nutrition, growth and development department, “in many countries, extreme malnutrition can be caused when there is war, a drought, some sort of catastrophe or an earthquake, but in our country it is directly related to the shortages and inflation”.