Public Health and Nutrition
Libras de Amor focuses on combating malnutrition for pregnant women and children under 5 in rural areas around El Salvador. They have worked in San Julian and Santa Ana since 2006. Upon their arrival in 2006, the rate of malnutrition for children under 5 in that region was 46%. By 2011, it had dropped to below 10% and Libras de Amor was just finishing up their last year in that region and preparing to move on.
I wrote the section below as a journal entry while in El Salvador as a themed reflection based off of two readings which I did as part of the ISSLP.
7/6/11
Two articles which I find especially relevant are "Poverty as Capability Deprivation" [by Amartya Sen] and the articles on malnutrition. The article on the UNDP report of 2006 shows the importance of the privilege of birth. For example, I was born in the US to a well-educated family, with healthcare and good nutrition from birth, having more mental advantages and greater access to upward mobility than a student born in rural El Salvador.
Amartya Sen's concept of poverty as capability deprivation is especially relevant here, as it relates to the high rates of malnutrition. The Libras de Amor program focuses on reducing/eliminating malnutrition in the first 5 years of life and for pregnant women. A study showed that between a control group who received no supplements as children, and one who did, the children in the supplements group had a lower dropout rate, higher literacy, higher test scores, and overall better life outcomes. Malnutrition itself causes long-term capability deprivation, something which Liras de Amor combats from its roots.
As well, I define poverty as not having the freedom to choose. People become more human by having and exercising this freedom, whereas poverty is dehumanizing in that it prevents people from exercising their personal freedom of choice. Even something small such as choosing to drink clean water, choosing to learn rather than forced to work, choosing to take the bus to the city, to work in a fulfilling occupation, to preserve good health--often the poor don't have access to this.
What come to mind is access to a good water supply. Paul [Masters of Divinity student from Boston College] said that in Guatemala, the reason the infant mortality rate was so high was because the women gave their infants water (dirty water) to drink. Both lack of access to clean water and health knowledge are examples of capability deprivation associated with poverty.
7/5/11
[commenting on the school where we held a health consulta]
So their water source is a muddy, brown, river. That's where the mothers do all the washing (laundry) and bathe themselves, but also where some of them (as far as I understand) get their water. So apparently there's a misconception about clean water and how to purify it. Well after sitting through a talk on how to purify water in which I determined that only one person has access to clean water and there's a lack of knowledge on this subject, I'm going to write about it.
So later on today, Rosalba, Douglas, and I went out to canton Las Cruces where they talked on clean water. So apparently, the two ways that I know of now are:
1. Put water in direct sunlight for six hours
2. Mix it with chloro in a certain ratio
They told some really nice stories about kids who get parasites and they grow and then the wriggling parasites start coming out their nose, or they puke them up, or they wriggle out through the eyeball.
Kids, drink clean water.
For the liberation of those whom, because of the circumstances into which they were born, find themselves severely disadvantaged from birth.