Sickness and poverty

Chapter Three: Women and their daily life

10. Sickness and poverty

The man is with his daughter, worried because the girl is sick with diarrhea and vomiting. Her mother wasn’t as concerned because the girl was always getting sick and she believed that God was going to perform a miracle. It never occurred to them that the girl would die, but two days after her photo was taken, she died. The girl was only a year and a half old. Her parents didn’t have the money to take her to the hospital.

When the women of Chajul and the surrounding villages have problem pregnancies or problems in childbirth, they ought to go to the hospital because their mothers and grandmothers aren’t trained to help them, and if they have problems while giving birth to a child, they may die. If the women don’t die, then their children are at risk of dying because the mothers and grandmothers don’t have the medical supplies necessary to assist in births accompanied by serious complications. We hope that there will be childbirth workshops for expectant mothers and that medical resources will be provided to communities for the women and their children.