Hunger in Haiti Deepens

By JONATHAN M KATZ

By Jonathan M. Katz

The Associated Press

DESCHAPELLES, Haiti

Every inch of Rivilade Filsame’s body hurt, from his swollen, empty stomach to his dried-out, wrinkled skin. The 18-month-old had been crying for so long in the hospital malnutrition ward that his mother no longer tried to console him.

After soaring food prices led to deadly riots in April, the United States and the United Nations promised millions of dollars in aid to poor families such as Rivilade’s, as well as help for farmers to break Haiti’s dependence on imported food.

Three months later, only a fraction of a key U.S. food pledge – less than 2 percent as of early July – has been distributed.

Even those who oversee the food aid programs say they are stopgap measures while programs to create jobs and help Haitian farmers to increase production are more critical to ending the country’s chronic hunger once and for all.

But right now, aid workers say, the poorest families need immediate help, and little of the emergency food promised has reached them. Most of what has reached Haiti is stuck in port. Nearly all the rest is still inside warehouses – because of high fuel prices, bad roads and a weak national government.

Barely any food at all has gone to the desperate countryside, where more than one-half of Haiti’s 8.7 million people live.

Even in the Artibonite Valley, Haiti’s most fertile region, child malnutrition is rampant. Farmers – reeling from last year’s floods and a dry spring, and lacking equipment that was promised to increase their yields – are eating the very seeds they should be planting to avoid future hunger.

One in three children is malnourished in the most rural areas of the Artibonite Valley, according to the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, where Rivilade was treated in June. Doctors there admitted 113 children to the malnutrition ward from May through June, almost 2 1/2 times more than last year. In April and May alone, there were 361 children under 5 who were severely malnourished and more than 2,500 others moderately so.

With families eating through their meager food savings and with the hurricane season in full swing, the food riots could be returning. On Thursday, U.N. police said, a small group of demonstrators burned tires and threw rocks at police and U.N. peacekeepers in Les Cayes, where the April riots began.

A photo of Rivilade from months earlier showed a baby with fat arms and black hair. But his bald, naked body was covered with an old man’s wrinkled skin. Diarrhea had shrunk his weight to 15 pounds, a quarter less than doctors say is healthy.

“He was fine, and then he got sick,” said his mother, Nimose Jisesle, 22. It costs 150 Haitian gourdes a week – $3.95 – to feed him, she said, but she earns just 100 gourdes, $2.63, selling knapsacks and firewood. His father went to the neighboring Dominican Republic to find work and does not support the child.

Suffering from diarrhea, pneumonia and mouth and skin infections, Rivilade was treated and fed with intravenous liquids and food. He was released a few days later with his weight up and diarrhea gone, said Dr. Erlantz Hyppolite.

Some of the children receive a super-high-protein mixture of peanut butter, oil, milk and vitamins known here as “Medika Mamba” that has also been used in African famines. Once they go home, however, mothers often struggle to follow doctors’ advice to thoroughly clean their homes and prepare more balanced meals for their children, Hyppolite said .

aid falls short

The United States and the United Nations promised millions of dollars in aid to poor families and farmers. As of early July – three months later – less than 2 percent of a key U.S. food pledge has been distributed.

At left, 18-month-old Rivilade Filsame was treated in June for malnutrition. With him is his mother, Nimose Jisesle.

Originally published by BY JONATHAN M. KATZ.

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