Paola Chorna in Buenos Aires and Fernando Nuño in Salta
Tucuman province produces an abundance of potatoes, soybeans, garlic, and strawberries. It has vast sugar cane fields and it is well known for its lemon, oranges and avocados. The only problem is that most of this food is available at a price beyond the reach of the poor who must resort to soup kitchens like the "Gota de Amor".
An aluminum pan, with a few noodles and five or six pieces of meat, was what the two young mothers 17-year-old María Vega and 15-year-old Soledad Bustamante shared for lunch, the same as the other 150 children that come together in the soup kitchen every midday. But they are happy; much of the time they have nothing to eat at all.
María has a son, Alejandro who is three-years-old. Soledad has two children: Ariel (2) and Florencia (5 months), and she also has the guardianship of her five brothers and sisters.
"We are surviving," says Soledad, "my husband does not have a job instead he collects lemons. The owners of the plots let him in the fields that had already been harvested and he takes the small lemons so as to sell them on San Miguel de Tucuman´s streets for just a few coins."
Soup, potatoes, and some fruits is about all they can afford if they are lucky. "We try to give our children most of the food we can get, but we often don't have dinner, and sometimes don't even have lunch, we try to alternate" she adds.
The fertile land does not offer much for Argelia Figueroa, a woman with an extended family of 16 members, living all together in a small straw and mud house. "Most of my children and grandsons are covered by parasites, two of them have tuberculosis, and most of them suffer from malnutrition," Angelina says.
"The dispensaries are practically empty and when children get ill there are no medicines. We can get only a bottle of milk per week and there are families like mine, with 10 sons and daughters that have to manage with that," she adds despairingly.
The Argentine Red Cross, with support from the International Federation and through funding from the Italian government, distributes food to soup kitchens in seven provinces in the North of the country. In cooperation with the public health structure, the Red Cross branches also work throughout the affected communities, supplying the primary health centers with some food supplements for children and mothers.
"Argentina is facing a hard and complex situation. Half of its population is living below the poverty line, the role of the Red Cross is to act in favour of the most vulnerable while the national situation returns to its normal development," FACT team leader Jan Gelfand says.
The Argentine Red Cross will soon expand its existing programme of assistance to meet the emergency and long-term needs of some 100,000 people. The International Federation worked recently with the Argentine Red Cross to complete an evaluation of the situation in the most affected northern provinces of Tucuman, Salta, Jujuy, Corrientes, Chaco, and Formosa. Needs to be covered include food, water and sanitation, health promotion and improved training of volunteers from the local Red Cross branches.
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