Guatemala children face food crisis

Guatemala's children are suffering as the country's crisis of chronic malnutrition grows. It is not that they don’t have enough to eat in what on the face of it seems a fairly prosperous nation. But children are not getting the right kind of food, which leads to stunted growth, poor mental function and lower earning expectations in later life. Half the children in the Latin American country are severely malnourished. In some areas the rate is as high as 90%.

Nine-year-old Domitila’s muscles are too weak to form a smile. Her body is fragile, arms and legs wasted, patches of hair missing, the veins in her legs shows through her paper thin skin. She is one of about a dozen children in the Bethania rehab clinic near to the Honduran border. Children here are the extreme edge of the hunger crisis in Guatemala, which has some of the worst rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. Jennifer Mizgata, a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) officer in Washington DC, saw first-hand the suffering of Guatemalan children. Talking about her visit in the Baltimore Sun newspaper, she wrote: “Henri is just 11, but already his prematurely wizened face is that of a grown-up - a casualty of a daily job breaking rocks in the sun. By contrast, his small body resembles that of the average American 8-year-old. Henri is kept out of traditional school by marginal school fees and his need to work to survive. While investing in education is critical, Guatemalans must first be able to eat. Without food, Henri and his peers can't focus on their education.”

Guatemalans live in one of the most unequal societies in central America. Poverty is particularly widespread in the countryside. Illiteracy, infant mortality and malnutrition are among the highest in the region, life expectancy is among the lowest and, like many of its neighbours, the country is plagued by organised crime and violent street gangs. It is a major corridor for smuggling drugs from South America to the United States. And now in the wake of the global food, climate, and financial crises, the fear is that chronic malnutrition can quickly tip over to catastrophe. Unlike the more commonly known starvation, with chronic malnutrition, the problem is not a lack of food, but a lack of the right kind of food, with enough protein and micronutrients to keep children healthy, said medical journal, The Lancet. “The chronic malnutrition could at any moment turn acute with the current economic crisis”, Wayne Nilsestuen, who heads the US Agency for International Development's (USAID) office in Guatemala told the jounal.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children