Email #1

Hi all,  I'm going to send a couple of separate emails because the content/tone is so different.  I hope you'll excuse the profuse outpouring....

June 14, 2011

Yesterday after I wrote in an email that 6% of children in Pestel have severe malnutrition, I finished up my online work, closed down the computer, and went out to meet Dr. Seneque in the health center. On the other side of the room, lying on an old gurney, was a small child, a limp sleeping infant. I went over and looked at him and my first thought was that he was dehydrated and may have cholera. But then I recalled that they were treating cases of cholera in tents outside (there are several patients with cholera in those tents even now. Dr. Seneque said that with the Cuban medical teams, they treated 8000 patients for cholera). I looked more closely and saw that he was dehydrated, but also malnourished.

There was no IV running, no nurse attending to him, no medical therapy. I thought all of this a bit odd. I stepped outside where I met Dr. Seneque and I mentioned the little child. The boy has malnutrition, he said. His mother had passed me going into the hospital as I went out, and the mother and boy were there, not because of the child, but because of the grandmother whose right leg has a bad wound on it. She was lying on a mattress on the floor parallel to him, and I had seen her as well but I didn't know they were related.

IV fluids could have killed this child with severe malnutrition. The medical tendency to fix this problem quickly has actually been shown to do harm. It turns out that the boy was not even in the hospital for himself, but was given a bed to lie on to sleep.

Here is one of the 6%. And it is a great sadness to see him and know that he is not unique in his illness. Imagine 100 people in a room, and 6 people out of that 100 have the same very visible problem. Now imagine another 16 people with a moderate or mild case of the same problem. This is the situation of malnutrition in Pestel. There is no error of hyping up this problem, any more than there is in over-dramatizing a destructive tornado or hurricane. Telling it just as it is is horrifying and tragic enough.

NOW:   I am back in the clinic and the grandmother is in the same position as yesterday, but I didn't see the baby and mom at first.  I happened to go out to the back where an acquaintance greeted me, then showed me over to the baby and mother.  The baby looks to be about 3 months old by size, but the mom said she's 6 months old.  It's a girl, not a boy.   Her skin looks pretty rough with some rashes and splotches.   She's a tiny thing.

The mom is depressed.  She looks so sad.   As hard as it is to see the baby, it is equally as hard to watch her breastfeed the child with the little girl's eyes staring straight up at her mom, and her mom being expressionless....sad.   

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Thriving Villages Blog
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