By Lucila Sigal and Javier Corbalan
BUENOS AIRES/SALTA, Argentina (Reuters) – In Argentina's poor barrios a food emergency is growing as poverty and malnutrition increase and doctors treat children for eye diseases and even scurvy linked to vitamin-deficient diets.
Years of recession and high inflation in the resource-rich South American country have left more than half the population poor, including nearly seven in ten children.
Food insecurity has risen sharply in recent years, and is now being fueled by a tough austerity campaign under liberal President Javier Milei, whose new government has slashed billions of dollars spent as part of a “deficit” plan to fix the troubled economy.
Official data last week showed poverty reached 53% in the first half of the year, up from about 42% at the end of last year. About 18% of people are extremely poor, meaning their income does not cover the cost of a basic food basket.
“There are times when I don't have enough food to feed (my children),” said Silvina Rizo, a mother of three in a slum on the outskirts of Salta in Argentina's northern mountains.
Rizo said that he now cooks with wood because he cannot buy fuel for the stove. Her young daughter is frightened by the wind and rain shaking the tin roof and walls made of plastic bags.
“When it rains, the neighbors are flooded. But where will I go?” Rizo said. “I have nowhere to go with my children. The rent is too expensive.”
The number of Argentines experiencing moderate food insecurity has doubled to 36% in the past seven years, a United Nations report said this year. One and a half million children miss meals each day and eat fewer nutritious foods such as meat and vegetables which have become more expensive.
“We're seeing cases of scabies, eye damage from Vitamin A deficiency, and corneal damage,” said Norma Piazza, a pediatric nutritionist.
“These things existed in Central America, Africa, Asia, but we had never seen patients here who had eye ulcers due to vitamin A deficiency.”
He said some children are admitted with neurological problems and convulsions where the only underlying disease was a lack of vitamins such as B12, indicating a lack of meat in a country that has long prided itself on its beef-based diet.
Milei's government, which took office in December 2023, has seen a “food emergency”. It says it has responded by increasing the payment of certain social allowances such as universal child allowance and food cards.
“When we are facing a food emergency, our most important thing is that people get help through direct transfers, which puts money in people's pockets,” said the Secretariat of Childhood, Adolescence and Family, commenting on a Reuters report.
The government says there are also signs that the worst is over. Data from the Catholic University of Argentina suggests poverty peaked at the start of the year and has improved since then. Inflation is slowing although it remains in triple digits for the year.
The President's office last week said the high level of poverty was “scary” and was doing everything possible to change the situation it blamed on decades of economic mismanagement and excessive spending by political parties.
'AID STOPS COMPLETELY'
Milei, a political outsider and former economist, often campaigned with a chainsaw as a crude symbol of his plans to reduce the size of the state.
His government has withdrawn funding for soup kitchens, which he says are inefficient or fraudulent, drawing criticism from aid groups and religious organizations who say they play a vital role in ensuring the poorest are fed. Many have stopped or had to cut back on food.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child said in a September report that it is concerned that malnutrition has “increased alarmingly” in Argentina in recent years. It cited the “negative impact on children” of cuts to community kitchens.
“Since December of last year, the national government's aid stopped completely,” said pastor Adrian Bennardis in Villa Soldati, a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires. “It breaks my heart to know that out of 10 children, seven are below the poverty line… and that part of society doesn't want to see that.”
Many Argentines still support Miley's drastic drug changes after years of hardship. But his approval numbers have started to drop and some of those suffering are resentful. Angel Arce, 32, has lost his job and is furious, saying he had to send his son to live with relatives because he has no money to take care of him.
“With this president everything went down. “I want to be with my son and I can't.”
A LOT OF RICE, A LITTLE MEAT
At the soup kitchen in Villa Soldati, Maria Benitez Osorio, 36, said the demand for the food she serves is increasing but funding has decreased, meaning the quality of the food is “deteriorating.”
“What we are trying to do is to serve a lot of rice and noodles, which is what we have a lot of. Meat and chicken meat in general is the least we have,” he said as he wrapped up a large stew that the neighbors were feeding him. the door on a cold spring day.
At Villa Fiorito, the hardscrabble estate where football star Diego Maradona was born, 32-year-old Cynthia suffers from malnutrition, which is thought to be missing her kidneys and lungs.
“I don't have enough food,” he said from his bed under the metal roof with holes where water drips when it rains. She lives in a room with her two children, mother and sister. “The kitchen said they can only serve food one day a week.”
A diet lacking in nutrients such as zinc and certain vitamins can lead to reduced growth and a higher risk of disease, while cheap carbohydrates are linked to higher rates of obesity, with an increase in Argentina.
“The quality of food poor children in Argentina have is clearly deteriorating,” said Sergio Britos, nutritionist and director of Argentina's Center for Studies on Food Policies and Economics.
He said 10% of Argentines under the age of 5 were malnourished, a figure that has risen in recent years as food prices have risen.
Susana De Grandis, a pediatrician in charge of child nutrition in the central province of Cordoba, said the incidence of diseases such as eye infections and scabies associated with malnutrition is a “warning” sign.
“It had been many years since we saw scurvy, maybe decades. It is surprising that one sees diseases in Argentina related to vitamin deficiency,” he said.
“We take these cases as signs of a critical situation because we have never seen them before.”
