Half of Guatemala's population does not have enough money to buy nutritious food. As a result, the country has the highest rate of chronic malnutrition in all of South America. How the NGO Action Against Hunger helps combat it among children.
Guatemala recently made headlines again due to the devastating eruption of the Fuego volcano on 3 July 2018, which claimed the lives of 113 people, left over 300 missing and displaced three thousand. This tragedy struck a country that has been struggling for decades.
Over the past four years, drought caused by El Niño and coffee rust, a fungus that has devastated entire plantations, have led to a decline in agricultural production, hitting the main source of income for families along the dry corridor, a region where most of Central America's nutritional problems are concentrated.
Most smallholder farmers have lost between 75 per cent and 100 per cent of their crops. As a result, the food security of vulnerable populations who already live at subsistence level has deteriorated severely. Over the past 18 years, in this country beset by volcanic eruptions and droughts, chronic malnutrition has been reduced by just 3 per cent. It comes as no surprise, then, that Guatemala has the highest rate of chronic malnutrition in South America and one of the highest in the world.
Chronic malnutrition is the result of a prolonged deficiency of basic nutrients, especially during the first thousand days of life, and causes irreversible damage to physical and intellectual development, along with reduced resistance to disease and a diminished capacity for learning at school and, later, in the workplace.
The rate of chronic malnutrition in Guatemala stands at 49 per cent — a figure that is alarming in itself — but can rise to a staggering 80 per cent in some areas, such as the department of Chiquimula, a rural landscape inhabited by indigenous Maya Chortí peoples, an ethnic group punished by both history and nature.
The combination of high levels of poverty (95 per cent of the population owns 5 per cent of the land), scarce employment and extreme levels of violence have eroded the resilience of many people. But not all of them.
Marily is 23 years old and seven months pregnant. She works as a nursing assistant in San Miguel, in the Chiquimula region. Every morning she wakes up at 5 o'clock and sets off for work at dawn, carrying a small refrigerator loaded with vaccines along a winding route of climbs and descents until she reaches the pick-up point. There a lorry comes past and loads Marily, the refrigerator and other passengers into the back.
After half an hour of jolting along a dirt track that winds up the mountain, Marily and two other nurses get off at San Miguel and make their way to the health centre where they work. The San Miguel centre is a simple shed, but every day it serves the indigenous Maya Chortí population, who live in conditions of absolute poverty and would otherwise have no access to basic healthcare. Indeed, 73 per cent of Guatemala's entire population has no medical coverage and 53 per cent has an income insufficient to meet their own nutritional needs.
Marily has been diagnosed with a high-risk pregnancy, but her employer (the government) does not grant maternity leave until the day she gives birth. "After a caesarean you have a month, give or take, to recover," Marily explains. Yet this does not stop her from fighting: she will continue to help those most in need for as long as her body allows. "It is very sad to see the great impact that malnutrition has on children's development and even on the development of my country, since this disease reduces the intellectual, learning and productive capacity of new generations," Marily says. "That is why the collaboration between the government and Action Against Hunger is so important: together we coordinate actions to guide food and nutrition strategies in the most vulnerable sectors." This joint effort is only a first step on the long road towards ending this scourge.
The Action Against Hunger programmes in the dry corridor focus on food assistance for families in crisis, primarily during the months of the so-called hunger gap, or hunger season, which runs from May to August, and on strengthening key local actors.
Food assistance activities are based on cash transfers, delivered at three points during the hunger season and calculated according to the number of family members. After each cash distribution, post-distribution monitoring is carried out to determine the impact of the assistance on food access and consumption indicators.
Likewise, in the Chiquimula region a screening programme is being carried out to identify children with chronic and acute malnutrition (under 5 years of age), referring identified cases to the health centre and monitoring them.
Action Against Hunger also supports the agricultural production of families receiving food assistance, by providing agricultural inputs, technical assistance and training sessions focused on soil conservation, the sharing of good agricultural practices in cereal production, the creation of orchards using local species and the establishment of agroforestry systems.
Finally, and as a cross-cutting component, Action Against Hunger seeks to influence at an institutional level the practices of prevention and management of food crises in Guatemala, promoting a social protection approach at national and local level.