Over 2000 Guatemalan children died of hunger in 2010
According to a report presented Friday by the national Ombudsman office, more than 2,000 children under 5 died in Guatemala during the first 10 months of 2010 as a consequence of illnesses caused by malnutrition.
The report is based on statistics from the Epidemiology Center of the Public Health Ministry covering the period from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2010.
“It’s worrying that mortality from hunger is double that of deaths from violence. Thousands of children are estimated to be at risk and there is no sufficient effort being made to save them from this grave situation,” Ombudsman Sergio Morales told the media.
The report also noted that eighty-four percent of the children died at home, without any kind of medical care and that most of the deaths were due to respiratory infections and diarrhea, ailments caused by high levels of malnutrition.
Ministry figures show that one in every two Guatemalan children under 5 suffer from malnutrition, as a consequence of the poverty and extreme poverty in which more than 52 percent of the country’s 14.4 million inhabitants live.
Most of the children who died were concentrated in provinces that make up Guatemala’s “dry corridor,” a strip that runs through the country from east to northeast, which during the last two years has suffered intense droughts blamed on climate change.
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