The unbelievable thing about kwashiorkor is that the very existence of the disease which has been killing thousands of children for centuries – was not even recognized in Latin America as recently as ten years ago. The deaths of those children were mistakenly listed as due to other diseases. It was the World Health Organization’s work in Africa that led to the discovery of the problem in Central America. When Central American doctors read the reports from Africa that kwashiorkor was caused by not having enough protein, they began to search for this hidden killer of children in their own area. This was made more difficult because in Central America the records concerning a man’s death and its causes cannot be depended upon. Doctors are not made to fill in forms stating their exact opinion. Instead, the untrained people employed for this work merely record the cause of death given by the dead person’s family, which is not always correct.

Return to the Reading