We are excited to share this great new BBC radio piece in which 17-year-old Rosa Angelica, from the community of Sololá, explores Guatemala’s halting progress toward the UN development goal of Zero Hunger. She interviews our Nutrition Program Manager Karyn Choy and Executive Director Anne Kraemer about how it came to be that families living amidst fields of crops have little access to nutritious food—and Guatemala, a major agricultural producer, has one of the highest rates of chronic child malnutrition in the world.
They also talk about our comprehensive approach to working with families and communities to reverse malnutrition. “This isn’t something you can solve overnight;” Anne says. “It’s not something that you can fix with one pill. So the minimum time that we spend with a family doing education, providing them with food supplementation, medical care, is six months.”
In a commentary reflecting on his 15 years of work in this field, our Chief Medical Officer Peter Rohloff underscores the importance of cultivating broad-based efforts to transform the social and economic forces driving child malnutrition while also keeping each individual child and family in view.
He writes: “It is tempting to think of big problems like stunting only in aggregate, as national or global issues to be addressed incrementally. But the enteropathy, growth faltering, and developmental challenges that the child you see today in your clinic is a very real and urgent suffering. That child's caregivers may have few resources at their disposal and perhaps little hope that things can get better.”
Thank you for making it possible for us to make real progress across communities and partner with families to find hope in the fight against chronic malnutrition!
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With the economy and health system still struggling in the grasp of COVID, Guatemala is now moving into storm season. Hurricanes Iota and Eta have not only taken lives but also have wiped out crops and food reserves. So our nutrition program is more critical than ever.
Thanks to our supporters, we continue to scale up our efforts to fight hunger, delivering food and other essential supplies to the families most in need in our communities. Families like Doña Juana’s, who are doing their best to feed their children in their critical early years. The local health post had advised Doña Juana that her baby was dangerously small and underweight, but with her husband out of work due to COVID, the family had little other than tortillas to feed their son. Our community health workers supplied the family with a month of groceries, along with suggestions for accessing locally-grown herbs and vegetables.
These deliveries not only bring desperately needed sustenance; they also provide an important opportunity for us to connect with our patients and identify other health concerns that we can address.
We recognize that, particularly this year, there is enormous need around the globe, and that many of our supporters are experiencing their own hardships. For that reason, we are especially grateful to each of you for your generosity and partnership!
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Even before COVID-19, Guatemala had one of the highest rates of childhood stunting in the world. This challenge has exploded as the novel coronavirus has moved into the country. Government precautions--including shutting down public transportation, closing businesses, and enacting days-long curfews--have cut off income sources for many families. Data from the National Information System for Food Security and Nutrition showed that by early June, reports of children experiencing acute malnutrition had spiked to the rate of one every 30 minutes. Action Against Hunger found that the number of people in Guatemala needing emergency food aid doubled.
In the face of these realities, we have stepped up our efforts to fight child malnutrition, delivering food and supplies to more than 1,000 families and continuing to provide guidance and care to maintain the gains we are making against malnutrition in Guatemala's most vulnerable communities.
One example is young Tomás, who once was struggling to survive and now is thriving. When Tomás was two months old, his mother was having trouble producing breast milk, he was agitated during feedings, and he was severely underweight. Concerned, his parents reached out to Wuqu’ Kawoq, which had recently begun working in their community of Caserío Sucún in San Andrés Semetabaj, Sololá.
We sent a community health worker, who consulted with the family to develop a plan to improve Tomás’ nutrition and health. The health worker advised the baby’s mother to drink plenty of water and to do her best to eat a diverse, healthy diet. She suggested the mother space out feedings so that she had enough breast milk and offered guidance on positions to help the feedings go more smoothly. The Wuqu’ Kawoq team also provided formula and nutritional supplements for Tomás, along with regular monitoring.
After nine months of working with Wuqu’ Kawoq, breastfeeding has improved, Tomás has reached a normal weight, and his mother has been supplementing his feedings with mashed fruits, vegetables, and beans. “Now he is heavy to hold in my arms," she laughs.
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The situation in Guatemala is changing fast. The number of COVID-19 cases has increased having by the moment 2,265 confirmed cases , including 45 deaths, these numbers are from the last update of May 20th nationwide.
We are constantly making adjustments so we can continue to provide quality care in our communities. We continue providing telemedicine to thousands of our patients, and we are delivering food and medication to our patients even with the strict curfews and governmental restrictions on travel. We're working together with the Ministry of Health to make sure we are able to reach our patients who most desperately need care.
We’re making it possible for 320 doctors to return to their rural health posts. With COVID-19 advancing, these doctors, interns in their final year at the University of San Carlos, had been pulled from the field because they had no protective equipment. This left hundreds of rural clinics with no doctors. The University approached us for help, and thanks to one of our amazing donors, we will be providing the masks, gloves and other protective equipment required for them to return safely to their posts! They play an essential role in addressing malnutrition and chronic disease, along with responding to COVID-19. These doctors will be located in the poorest, most rural areas of Guatemala, which have been without medical staff for the last four weeks.
We received funding from Miracles in Action for a joint communication and education campaign to get COVID-19 safety messages out via radio in Mayan languages across Guatemala to people who do not have internet access or phones. We’ll also be preparing messages related to domestic violence and other issues of particular concern during this time. We are working with many partner NGOs and institutions to make this possible.
We’re delivering 900 food aid baskets provided by United Way that will last a family of five for a month. These baskets couldn’t come at a more critical time. As businesses close and work becomes scarce, and all public transportation has been halted for weeks, a rising number of families are struggling to afford food. This will help us sustain the gains we have made in the fight against malnutrition.
As we face mounting challenges, we are so grateful for your ongoing support. Every single donation counts in the face of this enormous challenge.
Carlitos is the second son from two young parents who were looking forward to their second child. His mom takes care of the children at home and she takes Carlitos to all his appointments. His father is dedicated to work for wages with the neighbors and working at the cornfield.
Carlitos was born at home with a midwife but as time went by his mother noticed that the breastfeeding was not the same and also that he was not growing the way he was supposed to.One day he got sick and he was taken to see a doctor in the town. The doctor told the Parents that Carlitos had Down's Syndrome. He also had cataracts in his eyes and doctor said that he needed surgery, they also detected a heart murmur in Carlitos and the family was very impressed with the news , they didn't take him back to the doctor.
From that first contact with the doctor the mother and the family did not know that to do with Carlitos so he could grow normally , so the mother began to give him oatmeal but Carlitos had trouble eating it. The family was desperate because they saw that other children of Carlitos' age were growing very well and besides that they had never heard of Down's Syndrome .
Also they were concern about what people In the community was muttering. The family, especially the mother, began to be indicated by people in the community because they believed that when a mother gives birth to a "special" child is because she is suffering consequences from something she did wrong earlier in her life.
All this had the family very tense to the point that they were trying to hide Carlitos at home and stopped attending church and community activities so they wouldn't be not to be pointed out.Carlitos mother knew from a friend about Wuqu Kawoq and looked for the offices to ask for help to understand what was happening with her son. When they just arrived to Wuqu Kawoq Carlitos, was 10 months old and in severe acute malnutrition since his diet was inappropriate for his age so he was immediately referred to the center of Tecpán for nutritional recovery where he recovered very quickly.
Since then Carlitos has had nutritional follow-up in home visits which include growth monitoring, supplementation, dewormer, formulas Nutrition and education, his mother has received nutrition classes from the program. Regarding the Down's Syndrome , he also had medical follow-up since he was 10 months with periodic medical checkups, laboratories and medications, it ruled out the heart murmur and performed eye surgery for cataracts, in addition to the placement of an internal lens which has helped him improve his view.
As time went by the family understood, how a child with Down syndrome develops, how to stimulate him and how to nurture him properly. The family is very close now , the mother says “Carlitos has the support of his paternal and maternal grandparents, his aunts and uncles, he is a very dear child who has been taught to overcome many obstacles in life”
Carlitos currently lives at his grandparents' house with his parents his older sister and his little brother, Esmelin who is the older sister is her teacher she says, since what she learns in school she teaches to her little brother. Ana, the mother says she wants her son to grow well and get ahead, tries to do everything as she is advised so that Carlitos can have a better quality of life.
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