DROUGHT, POVERTY AND FAMINE

GUATEMALA. Jalapa. November 2009.
Maira Mendez is 16 years old and she just weighs 20 kg. She arrived to the Nutritional Recuperation Centre, that Castillo Cordova Foundation has in Jalapa, one month ago and since then she remains in the centre with her mother and her sister.
More than 50 children have died in few months because of the malnutrition and famine in the East area of Guatemala known as “Dry Corridor”. The lost of the last corn and bean harvest due to drought and climate change has left more than 50.000 families in a critical situation, they live in extreme poverty conditions and they only depend on their harvest to survive.
Moreover the chronic malnutrition causes a slow development in both physical and mental skills at the first growing stages, these lacks will never be recovered so these people will become malnourished adults with a very low intellectual coefficient.
The doctors and teachers both in public organizations and private institutions and NGOs check health of the more isolated native communities, they are also in charge of giving food among the population and detecting the most dangerous malnutrition cases.