Mothers bury children alive due to severe malnutrition

Abisimbolma is 2 and half years old; yet he looks like a six months old. Looking very emaciated, his hands are very weak, his buttocks wrinkled and laced with deep lines left by his shrinking body mass. Born into a home torn apart by abject poverty and illiteracy, Abisimbolma looks the exact replica of severely starved children portrayed in the media of famine or war-torn countries.

This is how a number of children look like in this part of the Upper East region where abject poverty, hunger and malnutrition has led some mothers to bury their children alive, dump them by the way side or sometimes leave them in a so called ‘evil forest’ to die.

The plight of these innocent children has been compounded by illiteracy and outmoded traditional beliefs which has led to some poor families secretly killing their malnourished children in some parts of northern Ghana.

Nutrition Health Officer at the Bolgatanga Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre, Georgina Akolba told The Weekend Globe “Well, this child’s case is only one of many examples of what happens here. In this part of the country many families don’t believe that when kids look frail, weak and stunted, it’s more likely to be clear case of malnutrition.

“They sometimes give the children concoctions with the help of spiritualists and then throw them away in the forest. Even more strange is the fact that they bury the children alive. And this would have been the fate of this young boy if we had not intervened. So you can just imagine the numbers of children who are killed because they are malnourished.”

The result is that here in Bolga, gravediggers are in greater supply of dead bodies than doctors due to the frequent demise of children as a result of hunger.

Such shocking images were normally associated to war-torn, poverty stricken countries but little did we know that it is closer home right here in Ghana. The rising level of malnutrition in the three northern regions of the country is adversely impeding the natural growth of children. According to statistics, malnutrition is rife in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions. Official figures indicate two out of every three children in these three regions are malnourished.

Ghana’s performance according to government statistics, in eradicating poverty has been quite laudable at the national level and in urban areas. But in the Upper East Region, poverty is still a major threat to thousands of families. The June 2012 report of the National Development Planning Commission compares poverty levels in both the Northern and Upper East Regions and it was clear that though the Northern Region managed to reduce poverty incidence from 63% in 1991 to 52% in 2006, the Upper East Region recorded an increase in poverty levels from 67% to 70% over the same period.

The increasing level of poverty in the region means many families are going to bed with little or no food by nightfall. Several of such shocking stories had come to the attention of The Weekend Globe, so in partnership with UNICEF Ghana, we decided to visit some parts of northern Ghana where these stories were emanating. In a typical house in rural Bolga just like that of Abisimbolma, a number of skinny looking children hang loosely in a piece of cloth strapped behind their mother’s backs.

The plight of poorly-fed children like Abisimbolma has forced health authorities in the Upper East Region to invest in a fairly modern health post, equipped with resources to rehabilitate the malnourished kids of Bolga and surrounding towns and villages. Named the Bolgatanga Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre, health officials here put malnourished children on a food supplement known as plumpy nuts until they regain good health.

Former head of the Ghana Health Service, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa in his view said it was quite serious the rate at which malnutrition affects children especially in the formative years.

“Any child that suffers nutritional deficit beyond three years is irreversible. In terms of mental development, they are adversely affected. These are children who go to school and under perform. And you ask yourself why, forgetting that they are lethargic because they are unable to perform. So we are taking out of Ghana’s Development Agenda, a considerable proportion of the future generation and things must change,” he said.

In the three regions up north, traditional practices such as women and children not being allowed to eat meat affect pregnant women who end up having malnourished children. Georgina Akolba said “the poverty and the high level of ignorance are stifling the efforts of health workers here. We are forced to deal with interference from family members and their outmoded superstitious beliefs. Penetration from religious heads such as pastors is also affecting our work.”

Since its inception in 1976 the center receives about twenty malnourished children a week. At Abisimbolma’s residence, the young mother carries her little her son on her shoulders. While patting his son at the back to prevent him from crying Azinribise explained why she believes her son is not a normal human being.

She said “when I gave birth to him he was not sick. But all of a sudden he took ill. I sought pastoral help to protect the child and the talisman you see is to prevent him from becoming weak. I am a woman of Frafara origin. We believe that children should be protected at this stage. When my child sees the undertakers, the people who take care of dead bodies, the baby becomes weak. That’s why you see all these things.

A day after meeting the family of Abisimbolma, I headed towards the town center of Bolgatanga in search of more observations that give evidence to malnutrition in the city.

About 100 meters from the Bolgatanga Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre, lives the Asakisina family, one of the fairly well to do residents of the Upper East regional capital. The woman of the house, Asa met me with smiles at the entrance of their residence, carrying one and half year old Maxwell a young boy who doctors had recently diagnosed as malnourished and underweight.

The one and a half year old boy looks stunted, a primary manifestation of malnutrition in early childhood. His buttocks sags and his ribs form fine lines on his withered skin. Unlike Abisimbolma, Maxwell is able to take some steps, aided by his mother. Just like Abisimbolma’smother, Asa also believes that malnourished kids are evil beings. Yet, she believes turning to a pastor holds the key to exorcising her malnourished son, rather than engage the services of gravediggers to bury him alive.

She told The Weekend Globe “Whatever the problem is, I believe it is spiritual and nothing seems to be working so I turned to the pastor to help out and deal with it spiritually.”
But, beyond the search for pastoral solutions, Asa has also been seeking the help of traditionalists to cure what clearly is a simple issue of malnutrition. The young boy wears a number of talismans around his wrist, waist and neck. So why seek both pastoral and traditional solutions at the same time?

John Akparibo Ndebugri, an Accra based legal practitioner and former Member of Parliament for Zebilla in the Upper East Region, said the practice of killing malnourished children is a serious crime that undermines the constitutional provisions that protect the right to life.

So how have health workers here been able to help families break away from the shackles of these entrenched cultural beliefs? I put this question to nutritionist Georgina Akolaba and she indicated that “we involve the families in this issue so that they can all accept what we are advocating because without that we can’t get anywhere. That is the only way forward for us to stop the killing of the malnourished kids and also make the needed progress.”

Georgina Akolba adds that although the center’s interventions have helped save many malnourished children from the graves, enormous challenges still linger in very critical areas.

The high number of malnourished children in the three regions up north means that their mothers end up spending weeks in the rehabilitation centers a situation that affects the farming season because the women are not able to perform their traditional farming roles such as sowing crops ––– millet, corn, groundnuts etc.

Whilst Health officials insist that Ghana is looking into reducing malnutrition in children, the reality is that many children across the country are still malnourished.

Experts say malnutrition is the underlying cause of death of 2.3 million children per year. An average of one death every 15 seconds worldwide is because of malnutrition. According to statistics, there are currently 165 million children globally who are chronically malnourished. A new report by Save the Children, says this preventable condition has affected one in every four children globally at some point in their lives. The report also highlights the extraordinary impact that malnutrition has upon a child’s cognitive development.

Source [citifmonline.com/Ghana]