GUATEMALA: Malnutrition Killing Children
Again
By Danilo
Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY (IPS) - The deaths of
25 children from severe malnutrition this
year in Guatemala, mainly in the eastern
province of Jalapa, shows that the specter
of hunger is still haunting the country,
aggravated by the global economic crisis and
drought.
On Friday, Josette Sheeran, executive
director of the World Food Programme (WFP),
described the situation in Guatemala as
"desperate."
An estimated 54,000 families are suffering
from food shortages in the area known as the
"dry corridor" - the eastern provinces of
Zacapa, Jalapa, Jutiapa, El Progreso and
Chiquimula – as well as Baja Verapaz in
central Guatemala and the west-central
Quiché, and another 400,000 people are at
risk, according to the Secretariat of Food
Security and Nutrition (SESAN).
The crisis prompted social democratic
President Álvaro Colom to declare a "state
of public calamity" on Sept. 8, which will
enable the government to mobilise funds and
purchase emergency food supplies without the
normal requisites laid out by the law on
public tenders.
The WFP has also begun to distribute 20 tons
of high-energy biscuits in the hardest-hit
areas.
"I had been seeing a significant increase in
the number of children with severe
malnutrition and infections," said Dr. Juan
Carlos Rodríguez, head of pediatrics at the
National Hospital of Jalapa, who sounded the
alert in August. "In one week we went from
10 to 25 undernourished children, and eight
died in the space of two months," he told
IPS.
"I have been working in the hospital for 10
years and had never seen anything like
this," the doctor said by telephone from
Jalapa, where 18 children have died of
malnutrition since January.
Rodríguez said poor families in the area
"eat mainly corn tortillas, beans and some
vegetables, and get very little protein
because they can't afford to buy beef,
chicken or eggs."
Guatemala has the highest rate of chronic
child malnutrition in Latin America - around
half of all children under five are
malnourished - and the fourth highest rate
in the world, according to the United
Nations children's fund (UNICEF).
Jalapa is just the tip of the iceberg, and
hundreds of cases of acute malnutrition have
been reported in other provinces since the
deaths in that area made the headlines.
A study by the Health Ministry office of
epidemiology reports that 462 people,
including 54 children, died of
malnutrition-related causes between January
and June. However, SESAN acknowledged that
complete statistics on the number of
malnutrition-related deaths are not
available, because of shortcomings in the
health system's data collection methods.
"Since January, we have attended 144
children, 90 percent for chronic
malnutrition and the rest for severe
malnutrition," Karin Morales, a nutritionist
at the national hospital of Santa Cruz del
Quiché, in the northwest, told IPS.
One of the most recent victims of
malnutrition died in the hospital there.
"Last week, we attended a little girl, but
her parents insisted on taking her home from
the hospital. She got worse at home, and
when they brought her in again, it was too
late," said Morales.
Morales pointed out that malnutrition is a
multi-causal problem, in which lack of
education, poverty and drought all play a
role.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the
right to food, Olivier de Schutter, visited
Guatemala because of the gravity of the
situation. In a press conference at the end
of his visit on Sept. 5, he urged the
international community to support the
efforts that Guatemala is making to achieve
food security.
De Schutter said that inequality in
Guatemala, a country rich in natural
resources, generates poverty and hunger that
mainly affect peasant farmers.
According to the World Bank, in Guatemala,
one of the poorest countries in Latin
America, around 75 percent of the population
lives below the poverty line, defined as an
income that is insufficient to purchase a
basic basket of goods and services, while
nearly 58 percent have incomes below the
extreme poverty line, defined as the amount
needed to purchase a basic basket of food.
Indigenous people are the poorest of the
poor. While officially, 40 percent of the
population is indigenous, international
organisations and researchers put the
proportion at around 60 percent.
El Niño
The WFP also attributed the situation to the
El Niño climate effect, which has caused a
lack of rain for many months, especially in
the dry corridor, leaving peasant farmers
without their basic subsistence crops, like
beans and corn.
Furthermore, the U.N. agency stated that
"the global economic crisis has reduced
remittances, exports, foreign investment,
tourism revenues and access to credit, and
increased unemployment.
"The combination of these factors is pushing
the working poor into the ranks of the
hungry poor, where thousands of households
lack purchasing power to access food," it
added.
In addition, earlier crop losses in
grain-surplus provinces "have reduced staple
foods in the market and increased prices in
local food markets," and household food
stocks that usually tide families over the
"lean season" have been depleted.
Andrés Botrán, a former presidential
commissioner on hunger and former secretary
of food security and nutrition, told IPS
that malnutrition peaks every year,
"especially in the dry corridor."
He said peasant farmers need more training,
and that better water harvesting techniques
are needed, such as rainwater collection and
storage and drip irrigation. He also said
the use of greenhouses and silos should be
promoted.
To fight poverty, the Colom administration
launched the "Mi familia progresa"
anti-poverty programme, which provides poor
families with a monthly cash transfer of
37.50 dollars, conditional on school
attendance and regular health checkups for
their children.
Botrán said "It is essential for such
anti-poverty measures to be constantly
monitored and for the results to be
evaluated, because of the need for cohesion
in multi-disciplinary actions, in order to
know who is doing what, where and for whom."
Malnutrition is a longstanding problem in
Guatemala. In 2001, 48 children died in the
province of Chiquimula, on the border with
El Salvador and Honduras.
This year, government officials and society
have been working together to keep the
number of deaths from climbing, in the Front
Against Hunger, led by the ombudsman's
office, representatives of the Catholic
Church and evangelical denominations, and
the medical association.
Maximiliano Aquino, head of the Catholic
Church social pastoral office in Jalapa,
told IPS that food is being distributed and
clinics are being opened to help the
malnourished.
The international community is also helping
to deal with the crisis. Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Programme
Officer in Guatemala Mynor Estrada told IPS
that with funds from the Spanish government,
the U.N. agency is working with the
Agriculture Ministry and SESAN on several
food security projects targeting some 2,000
families in the dry corridor.
Estrada said that "While the current
situation justifies emergency action by the
government, such as food distribution and
special life-saving nutritional support,
medium and long-term actions must also be
undertaken, in order to guarantee that there
are no repeats of this phenomenon."
FAO has recommended climate change
adaptation measures among 90,000 poor rural
families in the dry corridor. The proposed
measures, which would cost around 18 million
dollars over the next four years, would
improve the soil's water retention capacity,
make use of integrated agroforestry systems,
guarantee access to seeds, and promote
backyard gardening. |
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