COLOMBIA:
Embezzling Health Funds as Children Starve
Helda Martínez

BOGOTA, Apr 12 (IPS) - The arrest and investigation of officials accused of stealing public health funds in an impoverished Colombian region where a dozen children have died of malnutrition show to what extent corruption is an obstacle for the country's prospects of meeting poverty reduction targets.

"Those who steal health funds should be charged for homicide, as well as abuse of authority and embezzlement," Attorney General Mario Iguarán said Tuesday, reporting the arrest of an official accused of the theft of 911,000 dollars.

The funds formed part of the health budget in the northwestern province of Chocó, where 12 children died of hunger in March.

The arrested official is the treasurer of the town of Lloró. Arrest warrants have also been issued for the town's former treasurer, the former provincial treasurer, and a former mayor.

A total of 48 people are under investigation in the case. Among those who have been called in for questioning are the mayor of Quibdó, the capital of Chocó, and several judges, whose verdicts apparently let off the hook people accused of the same crime in the past.

The investigation was prompted by a Mar. 25 complaint by Ombudsman Vólmar Pérez, who said "the Afro-Colombian communities and indigenous peoples that live in the Domingodó River basin (in Chocó) are in the midst of a grave health emergency."

"In March, the deaths of 12 children and three adults were reported as a consequence of an acute process of dehydration, diarrhea and malnutrition," added Pérez.

This is only the latest incident of corruption in the province, whose governor, Julio Ibargüena, and 31 mayors are already under investigation in earlier cases, according to the Public Prosecutor's Office.

The case also proves negligence and neglect by the state, say non-governmental organisations like the Colombian chapter of Plan International, a British-based child-centred community development organisation.

"It appears clear that the deaths of the children were not a fluke, but were the result of a long process of neglect and marginalisation," said Graciela Butcher, director of Plan International Colombia.

"The humanitarian crisis is aggravated by drug trafficking, the armed conflict, forced displacement, the isolation of communities and the subsequent loss of basic securities: life and food," she said.

In Colombia's four-decade civil war, leftwing rebel groups are fighting government troops and far-right paramilitary militias, which have partially demobilised as a result of negotiations with the administration of Álvaro Uribe.

Corruption and a lack of will on the part of local authorities are identified as the main catalysts of the food crisis, which in Chocó is a result of the absence of a coherent national public policy, said the Foodfirst Information & Action Network.

On Apr. 3, the director of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF), Elvira Forero, requested an inquiry into another alleged case of corruption, involving sales of a food supplement known as Bienestarina in Chocó.

For the past three decades, the ICBF has been distributing Bienestarina in the poorest parts of the country for free. The supplement is a mix of wheat and soy flour, powdered milk, vitamins and minerals that is consumed with sugar and water by children, pregnant and nursing mothers and the elderly.

For years, there have been complaints that the supplement is stolen and sold as a ration for feeding pigs.

The Bienestarina case "is a shameful reminder that in Colombia, in the 21st century, despite the announced improvement in poverty figures, millions of our fellow countrypeople eat worse than animals," stated a recent editorial in the newspaper El Tiempo.

Statistics released by the government in March indicate that the proportion of people living in poverty dropped from 56 percent in 2002 to 45 percent in 2006.

The secretary of economic development in Bogotá, economist Consuelo Corredor, said "There has been a major reduction in poverty, which is positive, but it is a good idea to analyse the reasons that possibly explain this drop."

"According to the Bogotá Cómo Vamos (Bogotá How Are We Doing?) programme -- which evaluates quality of life in the capital -- the poverty rate in this city has dropped 10 percent and the extreme poverty rate has fallen 4.6 percent, which favourably affected the national rates," Corredor told IPS.

Bogotá, a city of nearly seven million people, "has a diversified productive structure and concentrates more than one-quarter of the country's companies and exports. That means the city's indices modify the proportions in other regions of the country," she said.

Authorities in Bogotá have adopted specific strategies to provide assistance to the poor, such as the Bogotá sin Hambre (Hunger-Free Bogotá) programme, implemented in 2004 by leftwing Mayor Luis Eduardo Garzón.

In 22 schools in poor districts of the city, the programme serves 30,000 breakfasts, 26,000 lunches and 370,000 snacks a day, Monday through Friday.

In addition, 67,000 people -- mainly the elderly, pregnant and nursing women, and children who do not receive meals at school -- eat every day at 241 community soup kitchens that receive municipal funding.

But in Chocó and other conflict-ridden areas, such measures do not exist.

In Chocó, where the local population is mainly made up of indigenous and afro-Colombian people, life expectancy is 65 years for men and 71 for women, compared to the national rate of 70 and 76 years, respectively, according to a 2006 study published by the Ministry of Social Protection and the Pan-American Health Organisation.

The national maternal mortality rate is 79 deaths per 100,000 live births, but the rate climbs to 429 per 100,000 in Chocó. Infant mortality stands at 17 per 1000 live births in Chocó, compared to seven per 1000 in Colombia as a whole.

The figures from Chocó show that "Colombia is far from reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), because economic growth is not accompanied by a reduction in poverty," economist Ricardo Bonilla, at the public National University, told IPS.

The MDGs, adopted by the international community in 2000, include commitments to halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger and to cut infant mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015, from 1990 levels.

In Colombia, "45 percent of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of just 10 percent of the population," said Bonilla, who said he did not expect changes in the near future that would benefit the dispossessed.

Conservative Senator Iván Díaz, a member of the Senate Commission set up to monitor the situation in Chocó, also said there are no short-term solutions in sight, given the characteristics of the region and the absence of the state.

He told IPS that "transparent voting, the enforcement of democracy, and its transparent exercise are fundamental to achieving change in the region."

Seven ministers on the cabinet of rightwing President Álvaro Uribe have been summoned to appear before the Senate on Apr. 17, as part of the investigation of corruption in Chocó.