Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Salta (Agenzia Fides) – The National Commission for Aboriginal Pastoral Care has made a statement dismissing the authorities of Salta, who classified the deaths of at least 10 children from malnutrition, as “a cultural problem, neither a health nor social problem, because the indigenous are not used to going to hospital.”
A statement sent to Fides by the Aica agency in Argentina, signed by Alice M. Torres Secchi and Thomas M. Torres Aliaga, doctors involved for 30 years in the healthcare program for the communities in Salta, rejects this view.
“Indigenous peoples, when they are treated with respect and dignity by health professionals, approach, and readily accept the official practice of medicine. Similarly, they drop out or refuse to participate if subjected to overt or covert discrimination. They resist in silence because they do not feel and are not considered part of public institutions,” the statement said.
The different points in the document are a summary of a book published recently by the Commission. The authors conclude in the text that this happens “because phrases like 'cultural malnutrition' or 'race of dwarves' (which another official in Salta has used), are nothing other than a disguised form of exclusion and failure by those who have the responsibility and resources to resolve this social violence.”
“The malnutrition may be treated, controlled and largely resolved, with appropriate policies that the authorities in Salta know of but have not implemented. It is also possible to eliminate malnutrition that irreversibly affects early childhood development, since public hospitals have the vitamins that are available to any doctor in our Country,” says another point in the document. (CE) (Agenzia Fides, 15/02/2011)
