Malnutrition another problem facing the poor

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

Nine-year-old Mahmud can only stare at the hospital room ceiling with empty eyes. His head looks bigger than it should be, his rib protrude and his stomach is extended. Both his hands and legs are stunted.

Despite being treated at Tangerang General Hospital for almost a week, he is still weak and underweight. He only weighs 13 kilograms, which is not in proportion to his 120 cm height.

Lasmida, one of the doctors treating Mahmud in the state hospital, said the boy suffered from what is medically called marasmus, which results from prolonged calorie and protein deficiencies.

Mahmud is the seventh of 10 children of Ri'in, 60, and Sutri, 49, residents of Gempol village, Rawa Jambe subdistrict in Teluk Naga district, Tangerang.

Ri'in's family has seen more than its share of tragedy. Three of his children were stillborn. A fourth died when it was four months old.

"Mahmud suddenly fell over when he was walking last Monday and has been unable to walk ever since. At about 2 a.m. on Tuesday he fainted. I did not dare take him to hospital because I didn't have any money," Mahmud's father told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Ri'in said he took his son to the hospital on Wednesday morning after several of his colleagues at Babussalam school foundation, where he works as a courier, urged him to.

"I usually take my children to the Puskesmas (public health clinic), which is very cheap. But several colleagues at Babussalam Foundation insisted on Mahmud being treated at the hospital, so I brought him here," he said.

Five hours after receiving treatment at the hospital, Mahmud regained consciousness, but was still in pain and unable to talk as of Friday.

Ri'in said none of his children drank milk after they were weaned by his wife, who also did not eat proper meals due to the family's poverty.

"I honestly said that I don't have money to buy milk. I would be very thankful if my children and my wife were able to eat twice a day, having rice, tofu and tempeh regularly," he said.

"Sometimes, my kids have to eat cassava or sweet potatoes," he said, adding that it was hard to feed a family of eight on his Rp 280,000 monthly salary.

He said that because the family lived in poverty, he had not been able to enroll Mahmud in school until this year. He attends kindergarten at the school at which Ri'in works. At nine, Mahmud should be in third grade.

"I have tried many things to improve my finances, from becoming a construction worker to trying various businesses. But all ended in bankruptcy. God might have predestined us to suffer from such a condition," he said.

Mahmud is only one of more than 1,000 children in Tangerang municipality who have severe malnutrition because their parents are too poor to feed them properly.

Data from the municipality's health agency shows that 1,139 under five-year-old children, mostly in its northern coastal areas, such as Teluk Naga, Kosambi and Pakuhaji districts, have malnutrition.

Health agency chief Bachtiar Oesman said over the weekend that the children's parents had become very poor because they had been laid off from their jobs or had failed harvests during the last few years.

Reportedly, hundreds of thousands of workers in the municipality had been laid off by factories that were facing hard times due to the economic crisis that first hit the country in 1997.

Farmers, many of whom are found on the outskirts of the municipality, had failed harvests due to natural disasters or plant diseases.

Bachtiar promised that his agency would provide assistance to needy people. "We don't want to see a lost generation happen here," he said, adding that a number of people had been treated for malnutrition at Tangerang General Hospital.