howardschiffer

Her photo came across my desk a few months ago. I just stared at it - it was hard to believe that a child who was 14 months old could weigh 6 pounds. People say someone is skin and bones but she literally was - you could see her bones right below her skin. She was sitting in her grandma's lap. Her grandma looked depressed like there wasn't much hope left. That was the doctor's assessment, they didn't think she would survive. It was obvious that a simple thing like diarrhea would have killed her. She had lesions over her body and the doctors as this medical clinic in Haiti tried multiple treatments on her, gave her grandmother a two month supply of nutritional support (rice and beans) and a year's supply of children's multiple vitamins and said there was nothing else they could do. This was in January, 2006.   Read more...