Expecting a healthy pregnancy (against the odds)

CHOCOLA, Guatemala – Kayley Ovalle is 22, pregnant and one of up to 260,000 women receiving prenatal vitamins as part of a six-country MAP project. Along with most people in this small jungle town, she was in the fields picking coffee beans today. She left home at 4 a.m., traveled by bus for three hours, worked in the fields in the heat, high humidity and torrential afternoon rains and then traveled back by bus.

She does not have a choice. Work, or don’t eat. That is the bottom line.

I did not get to meet Kayley today because she was away. But I did meet her mother, Marilia Leticia Ovalle Ramirez. She told me Kayley’s story. Brace yourself …

Let’s start with Mrs. Ramirez. Her husband left more than two years ago to make his way to the United States to find work. He took their little savings and mortgaged their small house to pay the smugglers who would get him there illegally. He has not been heard from since. The family does not know if he died along the way or made it to the U.S. and abandoned them. On top of that, a fire recently destroyed Mrs. Ramirez’ house. Having lost that collateral, the bank repossessed her small plot of land. The family was left with nothing. Mrs. Ramirez moved back in with her father.

Kayley is the oldest of two daughters. Her husband is away trying to find work on a banana plantation elsewhere in Guatemala, so she lives with her mother and grandfather now. She has been pregnant once before, but lost the baby at 10 weeks because of her heavy workload and lack of nutrition.

Coffee prices have bottomed out here. Storms earlier in the year damaged the crops. While it is possible for someone to pick 100 pounds of coffee beans in two days to earn $3 (do the math … that’s $1.50 per day), the beans are so small this year that pickers are lucky to get 40 pounds.

Kayley is stuck. Her workload puts her pregnancy at risk. If she doesn’t work, she risks malnutrition because she won’t have the money to buy decent food. Here is her hope: the prenatal care program she takes part in at the Hospital Christiano Santa Fe, which includes the prenatal vitamins MAP provided with the help of our partners, Shionogi, Inc. and Vine International. Kayley did not have such a program in her first pregnancy.

Mrs. Ramirez said she and her daughter are believing the vitamins will strengthen mother and child enough to ensure a healthy birth.

“We are really poor,” Mrs. Ramirez said through a translator. “We can’t pay for a private clinic and medicines. My daughter never had prenatal care until now. Now we know in this little hospital there is a special program to help her, even if we don’t have money.”

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