The following excerpt is from a September 14, 2009 article published on BBC.com. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
Guatemala has been hit by severe food shortages, with some 54,000 families living in the east of the country facing a critical situation.
President Alvaro Colom last week declared a “state of public calamity” to try to mobilise funding to tackle severe food shortages in the country.
Lida Escobar is a field monitor for the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) in Guatemala. She sent this update on the situation there to BBCMundo.com:
“In the eastern city of Jalapa I was astonished by what I saw. There were many many children with severe malnutrition problems. We found 22 children with marasmus and kwashiorkor [two nutrient deficiency diseases] in the hospital…”
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