Viviana is nine months old and the youngest of six kids. She lives with her parents and siblings in a one-room home made of cinder blocks with a tin roof in Guatemala. Viviana loves to play dolls with her older sisters while her father works as a fare collector on a bus, and her mother weaves traditional maya textiles. Although they want the best for their daughter, they live off only a few dollars per day, making it impossible to give Viviana even one piece of fruit, vegetable, or egg per day.
Viviana’s mother has noticed that her daughter is growing much slower than the other children in the community. When our community health worker visited Viviana’s community, she noticed that Viviana was over two standard deviations below a normal size for her age–she had chronic severe malnutrition. This has happened because Viviana is not receiving the protein, calories, and nutrients she needs to grow normally, which has also left her immune system weak, and prevented her from developing normally both mentally and physically. If left untreated, her malnutrition could make her have a lower IQ in the short term, and greater risk for conditions such as diabetes and heart disease as an adult.
Growth monitoring, micronutrient and food supplementation, and deworming medication will help Viviana recover from malnutrition–saving her life now and putting her on track to live a better life in the future. She will gain weight and grow taller to catch up with other children her age. Her immune system will grow stronger with the improved diet, increasing her appetite and helping her to develop mentally instead of wasting energy getting over frequent illnesses.
Her parents will receive the educational support they need to feel empowered to give Viviana the right diet to grow and develop healthily. Intervention now will give Viviana the chance to live a healthy and productive life, finish school, get a good job, and escape the cycle of malnutrition and poverty that made her sick in the first place.
Her mother shares, “We hope that she can overcome this sickness and grow healthy and be active. In the future, we want her to go to school and learn to weave.”
