Malnutrition, lack of clean water, common in Guatemala

In many ways, Guatemala is a nation of striking contrasts.

The opulently wealthy and the desperately poor. A modern city surrounded by impoverished rural communities. A 21st century democracy that governs an uneducated population.

“You can arrive in Guatemala City from Canada or the United States and to your eyes it looks like any other modern city,” said Christian Skoog, the UNICEF representative in Guatemala. “Then you get to the outskirts and it starts to look a little different. Then you get out into the rural areas where you are facing extreme poverty.”

At its core, Guatemala’s challenges as a developing nation lay in its inability to fund itself, Skoog said. It is a country of some 15 million people, but with an annual GDP of a nation much smaller than that.

“There is some wealth, there is mining and resource development, but that wealth is control by the very few,” he said.

As a result, while social programs to help the poor exist, they are inefficient and ultimately ineffective.

“So we have a country with 15 million people. Roughly 8 million of those live in poverty. The social programs run by the government reach about 700,000,” Skoog said. “So the government is saying, this is what we can do, these are the people we reach and that it.”

The impact of this wealth inequality and lack of opportunity is most striking the rural communities, he said, particularly when it comes to the health of children.

Corn and beans are the staple food, he said, with little variety. The result is a chronic state of malnutrition for many children.

This causes what UNICEF labels as “stunting” – the bodies children who do not have proper nutrition do not develop properly, including the development of cognitive deficiencies. Many Gautemalans are short not because of their genetics, he said, but from chronic malnutrition.

“You don’t recover from that after a certain point,” Skoog said.

The stunting process can start before a child is born.

“Even for the mothers there is a lack of education. They do not know what they need to feed themselves when they are pregnant, which can impact the child,” Skoog said.

UNICEF also has an ongoing education program for expectant mothers to promote breast feeding, not just because it is healthy for the child, but to mitigate the impact of not having easy access to clean water.

“Mothers will use formula, and while there is nothing wrong with the formula, it is mixed with contaminated water,” Skoog said.

Ultimately, he said, UNICEF works to help the Guatemalan government improve it’s ability to deploy social services for children but change will not happen over night.

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On the ground in Guatemala

For most Canadians, access to clean water is as simple as turning on the tap.

For people in some other countries, though, it is a luxury that’s hard to come by.

From April 11 to 19, Grant LaFleche will report on the Wells of Hope organization’s work from Jalapa, Guatemala where for the past 11 years volunteers have been working to supply clean water to people who have none. You can also follow LaFleche on Twitter @grantrants and join the conversation using the hashtag #wellsofhope