Informant38

Children are dying daily of malnutrition in Argentina as a result of the catastrophic economic crisis in the world's fourth biggest exporter of food.

In the past week, images of stunted, emaciated children have scandalised Argentina, long known as the grainstore of the world.

Meanwhile the vast, fertile country has increased exports of meat, wheat, corn and soya this year.

Some of the children pictured in north-eastern Tucuman province had the bloated stomachs, blotchy skin and dry hair associated with severe protein deficiency.

The national charity Red Solidaria said that 60 children a month were being taken to hospital with severe malnutrition, and 400 were being treated as outpatients.

The Centre for Child Nutrition Studies, which advises the World Health Organisation, has said 20% of children in Argentina are suffering from malnutrition.

Dr Oscar Hillal, the deputy director of the children's hospital in Tucuman, said: "This is not Africa, this is Argentina, where there are 50 million cattle and 39 million people - but where we have a government which is totally out of touch with the people's needs."

In an astonishing admission, the production minister, Anibal Fernandez, last week attributed the child deaths to "a sick society and a ruling class that are sons of bitches, all of them, myself included."


"If not, this would not be happening," he said.
"It is a chronic and cumulative problem. It has been going on for many years and everyone has been turning a blind eye."
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"I hardly had any breast milk" said 24-year-old Roxana de Benedetti, whose five-year-old son Hector died three weeks ago in Villa La Carmela, a shanty town outside Tucuman, and whose six-month-old daughter Milagros, who weighs only 2.8kg (just over 6lb), is in the children's hospital in Tucuman.


"They told me I needed fortified milk powder, but it costs 10 pesos a box. Thank God they'll give it to her in there."


The government has defaulted on an $805m (�500m) debt with the World Bank, which will cut it off from $1.8bn extra aid earmarked for poverty relief and social programmes.


It seems certain that any new deal with the IMF on debt repayments will be conditional on severe belt-tightening by the provinces - meaning no new social spending.