Chronic child malnutrition has historically been one of the greatest burdens of the humanitarian situation in Ecuador, the result of a multitude of causes ranging from contexts of poverty to the lack of information among families in isolated areas, which NGOs like World Vision are trying to combat on the ground.
Ecuador has a National Survey on Childhood Malnutrition (ENDI), which shows that 17.5 percent of children under five suffer from this condition, a figure that rises to 19.3 percent if only those under two are considered.
It's not a new problem, but rather "a decades-old challenge" in Ecuador, as Esteban Lasso, director of World Vision in the South American country, explains in an interview with Europa Press, in which he warns that the ENDI also reveals regional differences.
In the Andean region and the Amazon, where World Vision develops its own programs and others in collaboration with local authorities, up to four out of ten children suffer from malnutrition, while the incidence among indigenous communities and teenage mothers is worrying, Lasso points out.
The effects of poor nutrition are felt in children's cognitive and physical development. 36.9 percent of children between 6 and 23 months old suffer from anemia, and Lasso acknowledges that in some cases, the effects of hunger are visible in children who are shorter than their age or who barely play, "lethargic."
Part of World Vision's programs focus on supporting and educating families in the first thousand days of life, to remind them of the importance of basic hygiene measures such as handwashing, encouraging breastfeeding—one in two six-month-old children in Ecuador is not exclusively breastfed—or promoting protein consumption through foods that are easy to obtain independently, such as quinoa or lentils, for example, by teaching recipes with these products in community kitchens.
Lasso also highlights the "distortion" of some easily affordable dietary practices, since in some indigenous communities that do grow plants like quinoa, they sell the product in local markets to buy carbohydrates that are not as nutritious.
ADVOCACY WORKS
The head of World Vision, however, emphasizes that this type of care works and has allowed, for example, nine out of ten babies to be born without malnutrition problems in the regions where programs exist and that, among children who suffer from it , at least half have been able to get out of the pit.
Lasso cites the example of a mother who lives an hour from the nearest health center and who, thanks to personalized visits, now boasts of practicing hygiene measures and applying at home what she learned in the so-called "living kitchens."
His two-year-old daughter is now starting to move normally and walks "very well," as Lasso explains. "It's beautiful how children can reach their potential and start being children," he celebrates.
