Health and Nutrition – Context of Poverty

Compassion is a child sponsorship organization. Our focus is long-term, one-to-one engagement with children to develop them to a point where they can release themselves from poverty. ESSENTIAL to this process is health. Without good health and nutrition, a child cannot regularly attend and engage in developmental activities and, thus, grow to a point of independence. That’s why Compassion focuses so much on gaining and maintaining the health of every child in its programs through regular health check-ups, health interventions and healthy nutrition.

When children in poverty don’t have adequate health/medical care:

• Easily preventable diseases, such as diarrhea and malaria can become deadly.
• Diseases can become more devastating because parents delay treatment due to a lack of funds.
• Parents often must choose between paying for medical treatment and medicines or buying food for the family.
• Parents miss work while caring for their sick children, which results in less income to cover the family’s needs.
• Preventative health measures such as eye exams and dental checkups never happen and little problems can become big, expensive issues, costing the child (and family) time, money and future opportunity.
• Serious health issues are rarely treated and can lead to loss of life.

When children in poverty don’t receive proper nutrition:

• Children’s growth can be stunted, putting them behind their peers in terms of physical development.
• Children’s cognitive development can be delayed, causing them to fall behind their peers in school and developmental activities.
• Children’s loss of cognitive development during their early years can permanently prevent their reaching a higher cognitive development level.
• Children are more prone to physical illness.
• Children lack the energy to fully engage in school and Compassion’s developmental activities, reducing their performance and lessening their chances of reaching their full potential.