Fighting Malnutrition Amid Fire-fights

 

(This is how you look for a SAM child: you weigh, take the height, measure arm circumference using mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) tape, check for bilateral pitting edema. (19 July 2016, Jaz, Sulu) 

I started as a HOManitarian volunteer in my province of Sulu in 2015, working in highly insecure areas. I just learned about the Community-based Management of Acute Malnutritiion from my brother who started working for HOM as a local health and nutrition officer.

He’s been telling me about the miracles of finding children in near-death and utterly skin-and-bones and magically bringing them back from the edge. We call them SAM, short for Severely Acute Malnourished children.

How convinced I was he started showing me pictures of the children who were given another lease in life! As if the stories and photos of these children weren’t enough, I accompanied him during his community visits and saw for myself the transformation. I was more than convinced that this is how I should be spending my time and talent — the way I should be giving back to my own place and people.

Well, may I ask what immediately comes into your mind when you hear Sulu? You may know Sulu through what you read in the papers, what you hear on the TV or radio, what the social media paint us to be. But have you seen, heard, tasted, and breathe Sulu for your own?

I can say that today, as I write this, the things you say may all be true. The seemingly unending shower of mortars, brief but frequent pauses in the tranquility due to gunfights, interrupted sleep because of helicopters hovering above, and heavy traffic caused by the sheer number of armed-personnel carriers and military-filled 6x6 trucks. These traumatize you in many ways unimaginable. Even the sight of men, I do not know, makes me doubt that he could be an Abu Sayyaf member. Have you ever imagined how war makes you trust nobody else but yourself?

Days ago, I caught a man aiming a camera at my child cousin and me. I heard rumors that certain people are getting random photos and doing background checks on the people in the photos. I assume I now have a lengthy profile of myself in their database.

One afternoon, I received reports, or shall I say cries of help from my counterparts in the municipalities where we are, that they could no longer go on with the routine of finding and managing these SAM patients because of heavy fire-fight. The Rural Health Units, the main health facilities where we’re supposed to deliver our supplies and services, have closed down. No health staff is reporting and all its constituents have left the place. The people are now considered internally displaced persons.

No matter how I wish to continue rendering services for these vulnerable populations, I first have to look out for myself. Self-preservation. But it really makes me feel sorry for many things. I want to be there to make sure the supplies are still within reach even though these people have already evacuated. I wanted to spend time with the parents, telling them what they can still do to rehabilitate their child and prevent future relapse. And most of all, I want to be able to make the children feel that there are certain people working for a better and healthier world for them.

Of course, I could not have done this without the hands that support initiatives like these. My deepest gratitude and utmost respect to the champions in the Sulu Integrated Provincial Health Office, Rural Health Units, and Barangay Health Stations that rose above and beyond the call of duty.

Since we started CMAM in Sulu, we were able to treat around 500 SAM children. I wanted to share to you what treating 500 SAM children look like now. I wanted to show you a snap of what happens daily to the health centers in my midst. But even I, a local, could no longer take pictures for fear that I may be implicated in this mess which I, honestly, do not know how everything started and where all these are headed towards.

But I am still looking up. I know that in time, things will get better. But like all compelling changes, it will be hard before it gets better. (ANGEL ANGKAYAH / MINDANAO EXPOSE’)