-By Adam Frange, CHC Executive Director
I think that for our first blog post, we could talk a little bit about the CHC mission and why it’s important. Let’s think of this: WHO estimates that 3 million people –mostly children- die every year due to malnutrition related causes. Malnutrition kills children every minute of every day in this world we’re living in.
If you are reading this, chances are that you already know this. The CHC exists –and our volunteer trips exist- so that you can help with this. More than this, I think it needs to be said, these trips exist so that you (volunteers with and without formal clinical training) can learn about chronic nutrition stress and life in conditions of extreme poverty.
Being in a CHC-affiliated clinic or hospital, you’ll see this horror of the truth of our world up-close and personal. I can tell you: it is very difficult to see. Once seen, things like this are not forgotten.
Thank you for being at this site. Thanks for visiting any site, reading any book, etc, in pursuit of really knowing this world we’re living in. I’m excited you’re here and excited that you are thinking about ideas for what you can do, as our current mission states, to “partner with those impoverished of care to treat the individual and their community.”
We know – you and I – that three million kids are dead or going to die in 2014 because of chronic nutrition stress. That’s 3 or 4 children for every minute of every day, all day long, while you sleep at night and while you’re awake during the day, who have already died or who are going to die this year, right now.
We’re having this conversation, you and I, through this blog post because you know this and you’re horrified by it. Good. Join us or join another organization you care about and believe in. Talk about it, start a blog, check out our volunteer page, join a CHC trip, or talk to us via email. We might not yet understand the path towards an ideal world.
A “problem” can be defined as: “when where you are is not where you want to be, and the path to get there is not altogether obvious then, you have a ‘problem.’” We are here with 3 million kids, and we want to build a better world. For now, this is a problem. We don’t know how to fix the world, but we do know some of the first steps: by learning about the suffering of extreme poverty, we are –together- moving the world one step closer towards the solution.
This child’s parents can afford only to feed their child a diet of mostly white rice. Not having proper nutrition leads to a compromised immune system, which left this child vulnerable to opportunistic infections such as this fungal infection that kept him from sleeping or attending school.