The Global Sociology Blog

This is really disturbing. This item comes from IRIN,

“In just four months the face of this child in northern Benin was eaten away by the disease known as Noma. And yet it could have easily been prevented. The disease is not communicable, experts say. The cause is simply poor nutrition and oral hygiene. Noma starts in the mouth as a oral lesion that then becomes gangrenous, rapidly destroying soft and hard tissues of the mouth and face. Over 100,000 children suffer from it each year, according to the Winds of Hope Foundation which provides support, most of them in Africa.If detected early, it can be treated easily with vitamins, mouthwash and common antibiotics. If treated late – as with this child – major surgery is required and only 50 percent of patients survive.”

Basically, Noma is a form of gangrene that destroys the tissues of the mouth and it is more likely to occur in children who are malnourished and have developed some of the common chidlhood disease but the lack of hygiene has allowed a fungus to develop in their mouths. If untreated, 90% of the children who contract it will die. It is, of course, even worse for children who are HIV-positive. Benin’s problem is the same as that of any poor country: lack of funding for systematic prevention and reliance on donors, but that is not enough.

In the meantime, a horrible yet easily preventable and treatable disease continues to disfigure and kill very young children.

But another disturbing thing is the common tendency to depict medical conditions as caused by ignorance (an individual factor) rather than poverty and lack of access to medical services (a social factor). The original title of the article used the term “ignorance”, in this post, I substituted “poverty.”

Photo source: Godefroy Chabi/IRIN