PRISONERS in Venezuela have resorted to eating rats and pigeons to avoid starving to death.

Inmate Alejandro Manuel Mago Coraspe, 41, had to be transferred to hospital and treated for food poisoning after eating dead rats he found in the garbage, according to local media reports.

“We cooked them, but they were still raw,” he said, according to El Nuevo Herald. “We ate them anyway. I think they were poisonous and that’s why I fell ill. I normally kill them myself.”

According to a medical report, the bones and cartilage of the rats “obstructured his intestine”, forcing the severely malnourished prisoner to undergo surgery.

It’s just another symptom of a country in turmoil, which has spared fears of a mass refugee crisis even worse than Syria’s.

HOW VENEZUELA BECAME A COUNTRY IN CRISIS

As recently as 2001, Venezuela was the richest country in South America, viewed as just another wealthy, thriving democracy.

After all, it had more oil reserves than any other place in the world.

But those days are long gone. For the past four years the region been experiencing massive economic deterioration.

The minimum wage for public employees in Venezuela is less than $7 a month at the black market exchange rate.

The national currency, the bolivar, is practically worthless, and the country’s 30 million people are poor and protesting.

According to The Economist, the country’s highest-denomination note — the 100 bolivar — is now worth less than three US cents. Shopkeepers have taken to weighing them as a measurement of value instead of counting them.

The country’s annual inflation rate rose a staggering 4068 per cent in the 12 months to the end of January, according to reports. Economists say it could soar to 30,000 per cent by the end of this year.

The plummeting price of crude oil — which had largely fuelled the Venezuelan economy — has largely contributed to these effects.

According to CNN, oil prices hovered around $100 per barrel between 2012 and 2014. Last year, they sank to just $21 a barrel. This left the Venezualen government with less foreign currency to buy goods from other countries.

The country’s default debt figure sits at a staggering $1.2 billion, according to Caracas Capital, a firm in Miami that tracks the country’s debt.

Tens of thousands of people have been hitting the streets to protest President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government, demanding foreign aid, an end to corruption, and freedom for jailed activists. These protests often end in violence, and in some cases fatalities.

The President’s response has been to push towards authoritarianism, shutting down the free press and silencing opposition parties.

Starvation remains a growing issue. While the government controls the price of basic goods, these prices can change without warning. This — combined with the alarming inflation rate — is causing severe food shortages.

Venezuelans reported losing an average of almost 11 kilograms in body weight last year, under what many are now calling the “Maduro diet”. The number of people eating two or fewer meals a day is on the rise, and almost 90 per cent now live in poverty, according to a recent university study.

An ENCOVI study found that extreme poverty rose from 23.6 per cent to 61.2 per cent over the past four years.

61% of Venezuelans are now living in extreme poverty, 87% are now classed as poor. “Do you consider your family’s income enough to buy food to consume inside and outside the home?” 89.4% say “No.” Almost two out of every three poor Venezuelans are recently impoverished. pic.twitter.com/oaA99FaYG5 — Paul Canning (@pauloCanning) February 22, 2018

This isn’t the first time the treatment of prisoners has made headlines. Last year a Human Rights Watch report said prisoners were “forced to eat raw pasta with human excrement”.

“The officers allegedly put tear gas powder in their noses so they would be forced to open their mouths to eat.”

Basic healthcare and medicine is also becoming increasingly unavailable across the country.

Orfram Moreno, a doctor at a public hospital in Merida, told Al Jazeera: “Most of the time patients die because their families are out of the hospital looking for the treatments and they don’t come at a time we can use the treatment, when they bring the treatment, the patient’s already dying.”

‘A MIGRANT CRISIS WORSE THAN SYRIA’S’

Throughout South America, there are now fears the millions of people attempting to flee Venezuela could inspire a global migrant crisis similar to Syria’s.

According to the Brookings Institution, four million Venezuelans — over 10 per cent of the population — have left the country in search of better living conditions.

Brookings Institution fellow Dany Bahar warned this number will only increase rapidly as time goes on.

“The economic and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is perhaps the worst that the hemisphere has seen in modern history,” he wrote. “To keep proportions, bear in mind the estimates of refugees who left Syria during the war account for about 5 million individuals.

“Considering that the situation on the ground is deteriorating by the minute and the lack of food and medicine in Venezuela will probably get much worse, the 4 million figure will only go up, and very rapidly.”

Fears of a similar crisis are mostly being felt in neighbouring Colombia, where local authorities fear the increased economic and humanitarian burden. Brazil, Guyana and nearby Caribbean islands would also be affected.

Last year, SBS Spanish reported that Venezualens were being denied visas just to visit Australia due to the country’s “volatile situation”.

Maduro, meanwhile, just formally presented his candidacy for the upcoming April Venezualen election.

With very little standing in his way, it’s unlikely things will change for anyone who remains in the country’s ruins.

— with Reuters