‘I didn’t eat for days’: hunger stalks Venezuelan refugees

Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao's swelling shanty towns

A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia's desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.

The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.