kids health

A few weeks ago I was running near Wat Phnom just before 5:30am when I noticed a tuk-tuk parked on the side of the road. Four brown, sleepy eyes peered at me from above the seat. The two faces looked identical, just a year or so separating the siblings. There was another body curled up under a blanket on the opposite seat. My guess it was their dad. The kids were silent. In the couple of seconds it took me to run past their tuk-tuk I noticed that it was stocked with a couple of boxes, a mat and some empty 2L drink bottles that had been filled with water. It looked as though this was the family home... at least for the night. Their story could only be guessed at in my pre-dawn run. However, there was enough of a hint to tell me that despite rapid urban development, not everyone in Phnom Penh has “made it”.

In fact, for the most vulnerable, things are getting worse.

Last week I read in The Cambodia Daily about research carried out last year by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) into children’s health. Having surveyed 7500 women and children, they found that among children younger than 5, 8.9% were found to be “acutely malnourished”. This is compared to 8.4% of children younger than 5 in 2005. The percentage of urban children who are malnourished jumped from 9.6% in 2005 to 15.9% in 2008. The NIS survey linked these results to the rising costs of food in 2008.

The following day, a letter was published in the same newspaper suggesting that forced evictions are also a reason for higher rates of malnutrition. There are an estimated 40 000 families who have been torn from their homes in Phnom Penh over the past decade. Evicting families from their homes and land, dumping them in relocation camps and separating them from work, schools and the community bonds they have forged is a recipe for malnutrition and disease. It is not surprisingly, the NIS study found that figures from diseases for children under 5 were also increasing. In the case of fever, for example, prevalence among children younger than 4 rose to 58.9% in 2008 compared with 39.6% in 2005.

My “Phnom Penh reality” includes a few days to run, have coffee, meet friends, cook, work and shop. But the other reality has peeked at me from the back of a tuk-tuk. I saw tired, homeless kids.... and the local paper reminding me that nearly 16% of Phnom Penh’s under 5’s are malnourished.