How Efrain came back from the edge

When my son was learning to crawl, an object plummeted from our freezer and landed on his hand. It broke his middle finger. The doctor in our Toronto emergency room made the tiniest splint imaginable. Gavin must be prevented, he said, from putting any weight on the hand for at least ten weeks. No leaning, crawling or pulling himself up on furniture.

It felt like forever to my husband and me, who carried the wriggling child for what felt like the longest summer ever. It was worse for Gavin, desperate to follow the orders of his swiftly developing brain. “Crawl! Climb! Feed yourself Cheerios and bits of banana!”

In frustration and very likely stress, our son lost his appetite. Three months later, his once-healthy weight had dropped to the bottom of the chart for boys in Canada his age.

This triggered a series of visits with specialists, including one who considered a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis. It was darn scary.

Thankfully, Gavin's appetite returned once doctors declared the finger healed. Now 21, my son is strong, athletic and writes confidently with that dominant hand.

But I won’t forget how frightened I was when his weight dropped off those charts. Not to mention the guilt I felt for not being able to fix things.

When illness kills appetite

Parents around the world are no different, when their children are ill or dangerously underweight.

I think about the mother of Efrain, a toddler in Guatemala. In the first six months of his life, her baby boy cried constantly. His fever regularly spiked to nearly 40 degrees Celsius.

But as his temperature increased, Efrain’s appetite dropped without stopping. Like my son, Gavin, he became much lighter in his mother’s arms. It took no effort to carry him in a sling.

Because World Vision trains community health workers in sponsored communities, Efrain’s mother knew to take her baby to the municipal health centre. There, specialists diagnosed him with an infection and moderate acute malnutrition.

The infection was responsible for the drop in Efrain’s appetite, placing his growth and development at severe risk.

What would you do if your child received a similarly serious diagnosis—especially if your family was struggling to afford food in the first place?

Carrying Efrain together

The first thousand days of a child’s life (from conception to their second birthday) are critical for their life-long health and success.

But thankfully, it wasn’t all up to Efrain’s mom to restore her child. She had plenty of coordinated help from a system set up to protect children from the risks of malnutrition.

Thanks to partnerships between World Vision Guatemala’s sponsorship program and the Guatemalan government, Efrain received swift, extensive care in a special nutritional recovery room for as long as he needed it.

His Mom had continued support for breastfeeding at home, thanks to the area's nutritionist.

Efrain healed from the infection, put on weight and regained his appetite. He was able to go home to his family where his relieved mother was ready to cook for him.

Here’s what happened next:

• The local clinic saw Efrain every two weeks after discharging him, for weighing and measurement.

• Efrain received nutritional supplements including vitamins and minerals to strengthen his immune and digestive systems.

• Guatemala’s ministry of health immunized him with routine vaccines, to prevent or minimize illness.

"It's wonderful to see a country's government health services working so well with communities and World Vision to provide this full range of important services," says World Vision Canada's Miriam Chang, a technical specialist in nutrition.

“It’s something they’re supposed to do,” she continues. Life, survival and development are the God-given rights of every child on the planet.

Efrain gets back on track

Usually, a child’s recovery from malnutrition takes about three months. The second part of this healing happens at home.

Through child sponsorship, Efrain and his family received three-months’ worth of essential foods like corn, beans, rice, vegetable oil, sugar and a protein-rich hot cereal mix called “Incaparina” which contains soy.

This gave Efrain the chance to put on weight, grow in strength and start back on the path to normal development.

He joins thousands of babies and young children around the world, healing and growing with the help of child sponsorship and other World Vision programs and partnerships.

This makes everyone stronger—from the child to the family to the community. Independent research has found that every dollar invested in our acute malnutrition treatment programs generates more than $16 in health benefits back to local communities.

Efrain’s mother will bring him back to the clinic every three months moving forward, to ensure he’s on track with height, weight and development benchmarks.

Thanks be to God, he’s much heavier to carry nowadays.