Mother and Child in Bolivia
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), if you are a young Bolivian, you have a 6 percent chance of dying before your fifth birthday. Diarrhea and malnutrition, conditions rooted in poverty, are the leading causes of child mortality in the South American country. Against this background, a UNICEF-funded government health insurance plan will allow doctors to provide unrestricted care to children under the age of five as well as pregnant women. Bolivia’s health services still have much work to do to ameliorate the underlying causes of childhood diseases. UNICEF estimates that 2.5 million Bolivian children are living in poverty, leading to the compounded problem of chronic malnutrition.
While the UNICEF program, which covers the costs of the medical treatment of children, is an important step in making care readily available to Bolivians, the government still needs to reach out to the destitute rural and indigenous populations. Prohibitive distance and cost are not the only factors that separate these Bolivians from medical professionals. The systemic degradation of trust may stem from a communication barrier: Many doctors and nurses do not speak Quechua or Aymara (indigenous Bolivian languages). Cultural traditions, such as keeping a male child’s umbilical cord long to symbolize masculinity, or the association of white walls, such as those in hospitals, with the burial of babies, exacerbate the already dangerously poor health outcomes for these individuals. UNICEF’s health insurance program, while a critical first step in improving child life expectancy, will be unable to achieve lasting change in the most under-served populations until cultural dynamics, along with endemic poverty and rural inequality, are addressed.
More information on Bolivia below the fold.