Doomed before the quake, babies face starvation

These photos were taken in July 2009 at Justinien Hospital in downtown Cap Haitien, the second largest city in Haiti. Doctors and nurses treat hundreds of children each day for malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea and other childhood diseases.

The most common illness, though, is seemingly the least complex: severe malnutrition.

These children are unforgettable: ribs protrude from their chests, teeth have rotted to black, and their bodies slowly waste away to nothing. 

Their future is equally grim. Undernourished children tend to grow into stunted adults, often with cognitive impairments that limit access to education and jobs. Their ability and to think and make decisions is below average. The more undernourished children, the more adults later under-equipped to deal with caring for themselves or others.

In the past year, a series of shocks — the global shortage of food, fuel and funding crises and four of the worst hurricanes in the country’s history — have escalated Haiti’s malnutrition crisis. These problems are exacerbated by the country’s weak government, patchwork international aid efforts and longstanding agricultural failure.

Before Tuesday’s earthquake, there were more than 250,000 malnourished children in Haiti. Now, with the country’s infrastructure in shambles, the effect on child health and survival could be catastrophic.

At Justinien Hospital, malnourished children, like 1-year-old Chrislande Renald, are fed a regimen of Medika Mamba, a dense peanut paste designed to heal the wounds of malnourishment and restore a child’s immune system.

For five weeks, despite losing precious wages, Astrene Renald brought his daughter, Chrislande, to the hospital every Friday. When she entered the program, she weighed just 10 pounds and was the size of a bowling bowl. During treatment with Medika Mamba, Chrislande gained five pounds, and her hair grew back thick and black.

But Chrislande is only one of hundreds of thousands of malnourished children, and the earthquake will undoubtedly produce more. For rebuilding efforts to succeed and sustain, feeding these children will have to be part of the plan.