MEXICO: One Out of Five

A Mexican Red Cross doctor’s bad arithmetic caused a flurry of horror in Mexico City last week. The doctor announced that he had found that 70% of the children born in Mexico die before reaching the age of four. Later he admitted a wild error in his calculations; the actual figure was about 20%.* But one out of five, he insisted, was bad enough.

Of the million children born in Mexico in 1948, more than 110,000 died during the first year of life; another estimated 85,000 died or will die between the ages of one and four. One of the main causes of death is malnutrition. Most poor children get no milk at all after weaning, drink pulque (fermented juice of the maguey plant) instead. The parents of a pellagra-stricken three-year-old girl last week listed a typical diet: for breakfast, beans, tortillas, pulque; for lunch, beans and pulque] for supper, orange-leaf tea. Said a Mexican doctor: “The children of Mexico suffer from ‘mexicanitis’—hunger.”

Mexico’s child-mortality rate would be even worse if it were not for gentle-voiced Dr. Federico Gómez, 52, who spent ten years cajoling the government into building (and subsidizing) Mexico City’s Hospital Infantil, the country’s first child hospital. Director since its completion in 1943, Dr. Gómez treated rich & poor alike, told wealthy parents: “You will leave your pride, your money, and your social position outside, and bring only your sick child. He is our treasure.”

Because of the Infantil’s success, the government has built three other child hospitals, has two more abuilding, more planned. And to spread medical care, the Infantil requires its graduate students to serve at least two years in Mexico’s hungry small towns and farm villages.

* Comparable figure for U.S.: 3.4%.