Reuters: The Hungry Generation
Malnutrition curses the children of Venezuela.
A generation of children is growing up hungry and stunted in Venezuela, where the economic crisis and a lack of public resources have led to widespread shortages of food and a public health system unable to care for the malnourished.
Last August, Francys Rivero, an unemployed single mother of four, feared for her baby’s life. Two months after his birth, even though she was breastfeeding him regularly, Kenai de Jesús wasn’t gaining weight.
“I feel like my heart is breaking,” Rivero, 32, told Reuters in an interview here in the capital of the western Venezuelan state of Lara. “I don’t know what’s wrong with my son.”
She tried repeatedly to see nutritionists, but failed. One didn’t show up, another required a month-long wait. Desperate, Rivero attended a charity event offering checkups and information for families of children with nutritional problems.
At the event, organized by Caritas, the Catholic aid organization, doctors performed a check-up. With donations from the charity, and financial assistance from siblings now living abroad, Rivero began supplementing her breast milk with baby formula.
Within weeks, Kenai rebounded. By December, he reached an acceptable weight for his age. But Rivero, like many enduring a recession now in its sixth year, fears she could once again find herself short of the money needed to keep him healthy.
“How am I going to afford such expensive food?” she asks.
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WNU Editor: Heartbreaking images.
3 comments:
Ah, tyranny. Mankind's historical default.
Politics is about ideology but we never consider the human psychology or biology as a factor. In a book called The Chimp Paradox there are in the human brain the limbic system and the frontal lobe.
The limbic system jumps to opinions, thinks in black and white, is paranoid, catastrophic, irrational and judges through emotions.
The frontal lobe is rational, seeks evidence, looks at the context and perspective of situations, recognises that there can be shades of grey and tries to keep a clear perspective of it.
In short the limbic (chimp) thinks emotionally with feelings and assumptions while the frontal (human) thinks logically searching for facts and truth.
Sadly the limbic system is five times stronger than the frontal lobe.
Maybe it’s time for us humans to go back to the drawing board.
Saw a good meme: You can vote your way into Communism, but you have to shoot your way out.
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