Last August, Francys Rivero, an unemployed single mother of four, feared for her baby's life. Two months after his birth, even though she was breastfeeding him regularly, Kenai de Jesus wasn't gaining weight.
"I feel like my heart is breaking," Rivero, 32, told Reuters in an interview here in the capital of the western Venezuelan state of Lara. "I don't know what's wrong with my son."
She tried repeatedly to see nutritionists, but failed. One didn't show up, another required a month-long wait. Desperate, Rivero attended a charity event offering checkups and information for families of children with nutritional problems.
Rivero holds Kenai while they wait to be seen by a doctor.
At the event, organized by Caritas, the Catholic aid organization, doctors performed a check-up. With donations from the charity, and financial assistance from siblings now living abroad, Rivero began supplementing her breast milk with baby formula.
Rivero holds Kenai who recovered from malnutrition.
Within weeks, Kenai rebounded. By December, he reached an acceptable weight for his age. But Rivero, like many enduring a recession now in its sixth year, fears she could once again find herself short of the money needed to keep him healthy.
"How am I going to afford such expensive food?" she asks.
Split peas soak in a plastic bowl at Blanca Naveda's house.
Venezuela's economic crisis is taking a crippling toll on the country's children, who face a growing risk of malnutrition as basic food is increasingly out of reach for many families. The public health system, notoriously short of medicine and other standard supplies, is unable to provide much succor, and aid groups struggle to bridge the gap.
Carlos Flores, 15, who is underweight for his stature according to his mother Blanca Naveda, stands in front of pictures of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez at his house.
President Nicolas Maduro, increasingly a global pariah for undermining democracy and overseeing the country's economic collapse, blames the crisis and food shortages on U.S. sanctions meant to force him from power.
The leader, also accused of overseeing widespread human-rights abuses and turning a blind eye to suffering across the once-prosperous country, often says foreign media and global
aid organizations exaggerate Venezuela's problems.
Adelaida Marquez, 25, serves RUTF (Ready-to-Use therapeutic food) to her 15-month-old son Javier.
A lack of proper nutrition is stunting growth, diminishing cognitive development and causing physical and emotional trauma among hundreds of thousands of young Venezuelans. As a result, doctors and other health experts argue, Venezuela faces a generation of young people who will never meet their full physical or mental potential.
Between 2013 and 2018, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, 13% of the country's children suffered from malnutrition. Caritas, in a recent study conducted in five Venezuelan states and the capital, Caracas, found that 16% of children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition and that nearly twice as many suffer from low growth rates for their age.
Jose Maria, 6, has been diagnosed with malnutrition.
Although the United Nations and other agencies import some food and nutritional aid, it isn't enough for Venezuela's needs and the assistance doesn't always get where it is most required. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has raised just a third of the $222.7 million it sought for Venezuela for the second half of 2019, according to official U.N. data.
"A population suffering from malnutrition implies we are going to have adults with less physical and intellectual potential," said Raquel Mendoza, a nutritionist at Mapani, an aid group in Barquisimeto that helps poor families diagnose and treat malnourished children. "We're going to see a regression in the development of the country because human resources are diminished."
Yinmari Colmenares eats an arepa at her house. "Sometimes she says: Mama I'm hungry, my stomach burns. That makes me sick," said her mother Dulce.
Venezuela's Information Ministry, responsible for government communications including those of the Health Ministry, didn't respond to requests for comment.
The ministry's 2016 annual report, the last one it published, celebrated advances in nutrition since the 1980s and said child malnutrition "has stopped being a public health problem."
Rojas and Jose Maria pose for a photo. "I have felt bad, because I have not been able to give them as much as I would like," Rojas said.
For those without enough to eat, the problem is very real.
Rosa Rojas, a 32-year-old widow and mother of six, relies on rice and other carbohydrates to keep her kids fed. Rare is the day they get three full meals. "We just eat twice," she said.
Gregoria Hernandez, a 23-year-old homemaker, recently hospitalized two young sons, Pastor and Josue Suarez, because they were malnourished. Shortly after their release, Sonia, her 7-month-old daughter, needed similar medical help.
"I feel like the worst of mothers," Hernandez told Reuters.
"I don't have a way to help them, to give them what they need."
Deina Alvarez, 6, who is undergoing treatment for malnutrition at the non-profit organisation Mapani, draws a picture.
Story
Sometimes, families are torn between competing needs.
Deina Alvarez, a 6-year-old student and aspiring gymnast, is underweight and receiving nutritional supplements from a local charity. Although her parents both work, they don't earn enough to fill a grocery cart and buy the medicines they both need as epileptics.
"Either we pay for medicine or we pay for food," said Diana Rodriguez, Deina's mother.
PHOTO EDITING GABRIELLE FONSECA JOHNSON; EDITING Paulo Prada; ADDITIONAL REPORTING Luc Cohen; Layout Julia Dalrymple
Sonia, 7-months-old, who has diarrhoea and is underweight according to her mother, rests on a bed. "She weighed 6 kilos and now weighs 5, she lost a kilo." "Due to diarrhoea, she lost a kilo, what worries me is that she could also end up in a hospital," said her mother.
