Three-year-old Bellian clambers up on one of the empty beds, hauling a shiny toy motorcycle up after him and ignoring his mother’s calls to finish his milk. With a mischievous grin, he reaches into her purse and grabs a 1,000IDR note.
“He’s too busy playing to eat,” his mother said with a smile. “The nurses joke that he is like three children in one. He keeps them busy, but they’re happier with him like this than the way he was before.”
When Bellian first arrived at CARE’s Therapeutic Feeding Centre in Sinabang two weeks ago, he showed all the heartwrenching signs of severe malnutrition: his tiny belly was swollen and distended, his legs so frail they looked as though they wouldn’t hold him.
“I didn’t know what would happen,” his mother said softly, keeping her voice low so her son couldn’t hear.
For nearly a month, Nuriani had watched in horror as her once energetic son slowly wasted away. The more malnourished he got, the less he would eat, and Nuriani began to panic; when she heard CARE had a centre for malnourished children, she bundled Bellian up in a blanket and took a boat to Sinabang, the largest town on the island – and the only one with a hospital.
On Simeulue, the area closest to the epicentre of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 132,000 people in Indonesia nearly two years ago, Bellian’s story is all too common. Even before the tsunami, almost one in five children suffered from chronic malnutrition, resulting in stunting, poor performance in school, and, in the worst cases, death.
When CARE first opened the Therapeutic Feeding Centre at the Sinabang Hospital in June, 2005, rates of malnutrition in CARE target areas were a shocking 21 per cent. Already weakened by malnutrition, many children also suffered from secondary infections such as diarrhea, respiratory infection, fever or malaria.
“When the first child came in when the centre opened, I felt so sad,” said Nila, one of the CARE nurses at the centre. “No child should look like that. In the early days, it was busy here – 10-12 children at a time. But now, there are only an average of three or five children. When I see empty beds, I’m happy – it means there aren’t as many malnourished children in Simeulue.”
