Little Albert’s healthy start
COBADONGA, Guatemala – The picture of this beautiful mother and child nearly speaks for itself, but I will add a few comments for context.
The serious mother is Maria Ramos. She was married at 17, had her first daughter at 18 and another at 20. The family lives in a simple tin-roofed house with a dirt floor and a few chickens running in the compound. She makes corn tortillas, beans and a few vegetables on an open wood fire to feed her family. Her husband works every day for a small wage at a nearby commercial farm.
Her content-looking, chubby little two-month-old son is Albert Geovanni Ramos. He is a healthy young boy. That is in part because he is a direct beneficiary of our project to improve the health of mothers and children by providing prenatal vitamins to women who would never have them otherwise. MAP, Vine International and our corporate partner, Shionogi, made the project possible.
Prenatal vitamins are almost unheard of in this remote community far down a rocky and often-flooded road from the nearest city with a health center. But Maria received them as part of our project. She took them in the last months of her pregnancy and benefited from the boost they gave to her health and the health of her baby.
“No,” she said through a translator, “we never have had vitamins like this. This is the only time.”
Maria is a good mom. She has taken good care of her daughters, Aida and Karla. She said the vitamins gave her a peace that little Albert would be healthy, too. And he is. I watched him sit contently in his mother’s arms, saw him squirm a little and fuss when he got hungry, then calm down when he nursed. He then fell asleep briefly before waking up bright-eyed. That’s when I took this picture. As I said, the picture nearly speaks for itself about the good start to life little Albert has been given.
