In his passport photo, Carlos Naranjo Moreno is chubby-faced, a healthy twenty-something from a middle class Venezuelan family in the Andean town of Merida. Now, he is gaunt, his clothes hanging off his almost 6 foot 5 frame, ribs painfully visible when he removes his shirt.

The son of a university professor and himself a former chef at a government hotel who cooked for prominent Chavistas, Mr Naranjo seems an unlikely candidate for the growing ranks of Venezuelans forced to flee their country due to hunger.

But he too has fallen victim to the humanitarian crisis which has engulfed Venezuela amid hyperinflation and critical shortages of food and medicine. His father died after open heart surgery when the hospital was unable to provide the medication needed for his blood to clot.