The UN World Food Program's director is ringing the alarm bells about the situation in Venezuela.
"I don't think the world realizes how serious this situation is," he says. "This could grow to become the single largest disaster the western hemisphere has ever seen".
The past few years, millions of Venezuelans have fled their country. Inflation was 6000% last year, and food and medicine have become unaffordable for part of the population.
A recent study by Venezuelan universities has shown that 87% of the population is living in poverty, and people lost 11 kg body weight on average, last year.
The UN refugee council pleads that countries should allow Venezuelans access to official refugee procedures (instead of regarding them as economic migrants).
"Considering the dangerous situation in Venezuala, it is important that they are not deported back to Venezuela,"says Aikaterini Kitidi, spokesperson for the UN.
Meanwhile, neighboring countries that have welcomed the refugees, are now restricting access, because they cannot cope with the influx anymore.
Even Colombia, which has a special relation with Venezuela, because that country accepted millions of Colombian refugees in the 1970s, has made stricter rules.
Venezuelan refugees can no longer easily get a work permit, and Venezuelan refugees now need to be able to show a passport at the border to be allowed in, instead of just an ID card.
Despite stricter rules, every day, tens of thousands of Venezuelans crowd the bridge connecting Venezuela to Colombia, hoping to get out. Many sleep in the street to try again the next day, woman are selling their hairs to be used in the wig industry, and children beg for money, eat from garbage, and sell their body.
According to the Colombian civic registry, 800 thousand Venezuelans entered Colombia last year, and the flood of refugees is not waning.
Hospitals in the border regions are overcrowded and can't accept new patients.
Criminal organisations make good use of the desperate. Women and children end up in prostitution, and men are recruited into criminal gangs.
According to the Colombian human rights organisation Progresar, the vast majority of members of criminal organisations are now Venezuelans.
World Food Program director Beasley calls upon the world to donate money to Colombia, so they can provide food and shelter for the refugees.