TUCUMAN: Argentina may produce enough food to feed a population equivalent to that of the United States, but little has reached one-year-old Debora Santana, who lay in a rusty hospital cradle with an IV drip attached to her rake-thin arm.
Her single jobless mother took Debora to a children’s hospital in northern Tucuman province after she became listless, refusing to eat the little food offered. She arrived suffering from diarrhoea and parasites and weighed under 13.2 pounds (six kgs), nearly half what an average child her age should.
Debora, her stomach bloated, looked up from the iron cot with dark, scared eyes. Mother and daughter had been living on a bowl of noodle soup daily and an herbal tea called mate.
“It’s a disgrace this is happening in Argentina,” said Mirta, a nurse in the dingy ward as she looked over the bed. She echoed the anger and shame Argentines feel at the plight of a crisis-racked nation that a few years ago was a beacon of middle class prosperity in Latin America.
In the latest of hundreds of often fatal cases of malnutrition, Debora was a “grade three,” the most extreme when body weight is some 40 per cent lower than normal.
Argentina, with a population a tenth of the United States’, produces annually the equivalent of two tons of grains for each of its inhabitants. But a slump worse than the 1930s US depression has made millions of families so poor they depend on state aid to feed their children.
“Argentina has food for everyone but there is a problem of distribution. It’s incredible Argentina has come to this point. It’s a disgrace,’ said Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna.
ONE IN FIVE CHILDREN MALNOURISHED: Debora has, so far, survived. But in the last few months five children died from malnutrition at the same run-down hospital as Argentina’s social welfare and health systems collapse from the strain of a four-year recession combined with endemic state corruption.
Health groups say one in five children nationwide is malnourished. Dozens of child deaths nationally and images of kids with the bloated stomachs that come from severe protein deficiency have sparked a crisis of conscience.
“I sometimes have to remind myself this is not Africa; this is Argentina,” said Mirta.
Argentina, with its legacy of state welfare and pride of having one of the highest standards of living in the region, has long said it is different from the Third World.
But the news from Tucuman and other provinces has reminded people how far their nation — vying economically with Canada 70 years ago — has fallen. And in the breadbasket of Latin America, Argentines blame corruption as much as scarce funds.
“There is money about. Lack of funds is not the problem. The problem is corruption, patronage” said Pablo Garreton, a hospital director in Tucuman. “What happened this year is that the corruption has jarred with economic crisis.”
Mirta complained about scarce antibiotics and how she begged for donations from firms. In the ward the air conditioner was broken. A sole fan moved slowly in a stifling summer day of over 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
SCALE OF CRISIS: A woman prayed in the corridor outside where mothers occasionally tried to escape the ward’s stifling heat. She lay hands on a statue of the Virgin Mary embedded in a cold stone wall.
Deaths from malnutrition in Argentina are nothing new — before this year’s crisis the national charity Red Solidaria estimated that several children died daily from malnutrition.
But the sheer scale of the crisis has shocked even hardened doctors. Official data this year is not available but doctors in Tucuman say their number of malnutrition cases has doubled.
A currency devaluation in January that doubled basic food prices from noodles to cooking oil only added to poverty. Imported hospital supplies such as syringes tripled in price.
One of the places worst hit was Tucuman, a region of more than a million people and one of the world’s biggest lemon exporters.
At the children’s hospital, some 200 mothers gathered at the emergency entrance. Some babies wailed in the heat. Others with the red-streaked hair caused by malnutrition slumped over their mother’s shoulders with listless eyes, motionless.
“It’s the babies that don’t cry that you worry about,” said one doctor, who asked to remain anonymous.
By midday, the hospital had dealt with only 11 cases. Nearly all would be turned away.
“All we can do is advise over what to eat even when we know they can’t afford anything,” he added.
HUNGER IN ARGENTINA: A few miles away, Rosario Vargas, 18, stood by a wooden shack with her 18-month-old daughter who weighed 17.5 pounds (eight kg) — nine pounds (four kg) underweight. Neither had eaten for 24 hours. For breakfast she gave her daughter herbal tea.
The father, married to another woman, disappeared long ago. Rosario and seven younger sisters lived with their mother, the main breadwinner whose job was “changa” — an increasingly common Argentine word meaning scavenging for odd jobs.—Reuters
