From: barnhart@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Mr. Aaron Barnhart)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: IPS:MOZAMBIQUE: MALNOURISHED CHILDREN HAVE NO RIGHT TO HELP/RELATE/
Date: 16 Dec 92 02:53:40 GMT
Organization: Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A.

Copyright Inter Press Service 1992, all rights reserved.  Permission to re-
print within 7 days of original date only with permission from 'newsdesk'.

Area: Opecna Morning Transmission
Reference: Third World Dvpmnt
Title: MOZAMBIQUE: MALNOURISHED CHILDREN HAVE NO RIGHT TO HELP/RELATE/


/attn editors: please relate the following to 'mozambique:
bringing home the brutalised child soldiers' moved from maputo
at 05:00 gmt/

an inter press service feature

by benilde dos santos

maputo, dec 7 (ips) -- a loophole in the law is denying badly
malnourished children humanitarian aid simply because they live
in the capital maputo, and have been in the city for less than a
year.

co-ordinator of the govenment programme to help street
children, pita fazenda, said it is difficult to give an exact
number of those affected, but guessed it must be in the
hundreds.

mozambique's major cities and maputo in particular, are
over-spilling with thousands of desperate people driven from
their rural homes by 17 years of civil war in the countryside.
maputo's population has grown by five percent annually in the
last decade.

''in relation to under-fed children aged one to five years
old, one of the criteria established to get aid, is that they
must have been living in the city for over a year, and then they
are only eligible if their weight does not correspond to their
height'', director of the government's 'office to support
vulnerable people' (gapvu), leonardo lopes told ips.

but according to an official source, these criteria fail to
address the current situation. chronic malnourishment among
thousands of mozambique's children means many do not develop
properly and are short for their age.

''a five year old child can have the height of a two year old
due to chronic malnourishment. according to gapvu criteria, this
child could be given a normal weight, and be excluded from
help'', pointed out the source.

asked why recently arrived children in the city have no right
to assistance, lopes said ''there are gaps in every law''.

he denied that the aim of the policy was to encourage rural
people back home, although in the post war period he noted, that
could be beneficial. (more/ips)


mozambique: malnourished (2)

the government and mozambique national resistance (renamo)
rebels, signed a peace accord in october. but, two months on,
the official process of demilitarisation has not even started
and few people have left the cities to return to their homes.

as war refugees, recently arrived people in the urban areas
are often the ones least able to feed themselves, in a country
where over 60 percent of the 15.6 million population lives in
absolute poverty and over three million depend on emergency food
aid.

assistance from gapvu, established in 1989 to help the
displaced in maputo, is in clothes and money. payments,
according to family size, range from the equivalent of five to
thirty dollars each month.

according to a nutritionist at the ministry of health, kerry
sylvester, ''there are only three pediatricians for three
hospitals in maputo city, specialised to deal with the
rehabilitation of malnourished children''.

slyvester said the hosptials take no responsibility for such
cases as soon as the child is over the most critical phase of
malnutrition.

''children living in the city for less than a year depend on
a haphazard and irregular support from non-governmental
organisations (ngos)'', she said.

although dozens of ngos operate in mozambique, most of these
concentrate their efforts in the countryside. for the freshly
arrived displaced children on the city streets, they have to
fend for themselves. (end/ips/bds/rw/oa/92)