By: Danilo Valladares
The following excerpt is from an article published on November 4, 2009 by Inter Press Service. To view the article in its entirety, please click here.
GUATEMALA CITY, Nov 4 (IPS) – Juan Manuel Ardón’s bones jut out and his hair is dull and thin: signs of severe malnutrition. He is so weak that he can hardly walk or talk, and the doctors say his weight and stature are those of a six-year-old, rather than 15-year-old, boy.
Juan Manuel is being cared for at the Nutritional Centre in the town of Jocotán, in the eastern Guatemalan province of Chiquimula, where he drags himself down the corridor like an old man in a little boy’s shriveled body.
But other little ones in this impoverished Central American country haven’t even made it to Juan Manuel’s age. At least 54 children have died of malnutrition so far this year in Guatemala, according to the General Directorate of Epidemiology, while 2.5 million people out of a total population of 13 million are facing a food crisis, according to United Nations figures.
Click here to read the rest of this article, or here to read more about the 2009 Food Crisis.
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