The Guereda Hospital Therapeutic Feeding Center—recently rehabilitated by International Medical Corps has a cozy, welcoming atmosphere. Women sit together on mattresses or blankets on the floor with their malnourished children and chatter or try to make their little ones feed. Their vibrant twists of cloth drape and undrape as they wander around and breast or spoon feed their children, filling the room with colorful splatterings of fabric.
From up close, however, the reality is less romantic.
One mother is nowhere to be seen when we arrive—instead, grandmother tries to calm down a hysterical Fatima who refuses all food and drink. At 12 months she looks more like four in the tiny blue dress hanging from her shoulders. Having heard about International Medical Corps’ feeding facility at the hospital, the grandmother brought her here this morning in the hope that the incessant screaming might stop. Jill, the International Medical Corps doctor who covers the feeding centers, immediately asks for her mother to be brought; when the woman arrives Fatima’s crying instantly stops. But when the little one searches feebly for her milk, the mother—with watchful approval from the grandmother— refuses to give the child her breast.
After an endless stream of questions from Jill and attempts to make the mother understand the importance of breastfeeding, it finally transpires that the mother has given up on the little one’s recovery. She is three months pregnant and refuses the child milk in order to decrease her chances of a miscarriage; ultimately rationalizing this frail child’s life against the one in her womb.
Jill insists that if this child remains within the clinic she will survive, but not without the participation of Fatima’s mother. Our doctor has realized that the biggest risk to this child’s life is her own mother’s loss of hope. The woman is finally convinced into compromising between her home chores and the importance of the child.
Less than 48 hours later, on returning to the TFC we find a changed family. The mother, together with another daughter, is entirely engaged in her little child, grinning from ear to ear as little Fatima gobbles up sardines from the plate with greedy splutterings. The previously uninterested mother shows Jill with great pride how when she takes away the food, Fatima grabs the plate from her with stubborn determination.
As the baby launches herself back into her food, the International Medical Corps staff return to their work with the reaffirmed conviction that their every action is having lasting, living effects on the refugees and the local Chadian population.