Here's a picture of Daisy, who has spent the fourth month of her life recovering from starvation. I've been the food monitor and hygiene police for the baby and mom since they came to CRN from the hospital, where Daisy had been fed intravenously for 3 weeks. The mother, Lana, told me that her breast milk gave out after two months, and due to lack of money, they fed Daisy "aguas aromaticas" (flavored water). After a month of that, Daisy was brought to the hospital with Stage 3 malnutrition: She looked like a newborn, but she had a swollen belly and limbs, and chronic diarrhea; her hair was falling out; and she had dermatitis due to Vitamin B deficiency.
Now she's better - weighs about 6 pounds - and is becoming sociable and very smile-y. But she has a long way to go to achieve normalcy. She's bascially having to re-learn how to eat - i.e., suck from a bottle, bring up the gas bubbles, keep going until she's full and stop before she's too full. Today as I was feeding and burping her while Lana washed the clothes and diapers, I thought how sad it is that she had this horrible setback, and how inefficient it is for governments and charities to treat hunger instead of prevent it.
Ecuador has instituted a program to provide a free food supplement for children under 3 years of age and nursing mothers. I'm not sure why that program didn't save this family from the catastrophe that has befallen them; maybe it's too new, or the family's pueblo is too remote, or the family is just too dysfunctional. Lana has seven living children (she has lost children to illness before, most recently just one year ago), all fathered by Ivan, who is 17 years her senior. The oldest child, 15, is already married and living away from home. The 13 year old is at home caring for the four younger children while Lana is at CRN with Daisy. The father is a farm laborer who earns about $5 per day.
At any rate, Lana told me that the 2 children closest in age to Daisy are also "desnutrida" (malnourished), so I need to nudge the CRN staff to get those kids to the center, too. But the social worker is considering permanently removing Daisy from the family, and may be more concerned about building a court case than addressing the needs of additional children.
Enjoying your photos. How's Daisy doing today? How far is the Internet cafe from where you live? How bout some photos of the volleyball court?
ReplyDeleteAnd happy belated birthday to Judy Munger (yesterday?)
Happy Birthday, Judy!!
ReplyDeleteRe the volleyball pic - I almost had one yesterday, of the taxistas playing a makeshift game in the middle of one of the BIG streets closed off yesterday ... Santo Domingo was shut down completely, to pressure the government to vote to make SD a province in its own right - something that will get the area a bigger share of the tax pie. Word was out that the general strike was going to last however long it would take - As it turned out, didn´t take long - about ten hours. Civil disobedience that´s widespread and effective - what a pleasure to witness!!!
Re Daisy - met the dad today and had a few wrenching conversations with staff re the future. Also met the ¨patron¨, or owner of the farm where the father works; he brought the dad to town...It´s so hard to comprehend how this baby came so close to dying of hunger, living less than a mile from people who obviously had the means to help....
Re malnutrition, I just saw a 60 Minutes segment on the success of a product developed by Medecins sans frontieres that the MSF site calls RUF (ready to eat food). It is a combination of peanut butter, dried milk, vitamins and something else to make it more palatable to toddlers. It has apparently been very successful in west Africa and has the advantages of not needing refrigeration and not being very expensive. The 60 Minutes website was useless in terms of more info, but the MSF url on this topic is: http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/invoke.cfm?objectid=88CB0C21-15C5-F00A-258407B58D2566C1&component=toolkit.article&method=full_html
ReplyDeleteHope Daisy and sibs are doing better.
Mary