Impoverished mom leaves malnourished baby

A mother from an impoverished family has left her three-month-old malnourished baby, Renaldi, in the care of his grandparents Otih, 67, and Oyoh, 52.

The elderly couple live in a shanty in Maleber subdistrict, Andir district, Bandung city, West Java.

Oyoh said Renaldi was born on Oct. 5, 2011 at Hasan Sadikin Hospital in Bandung, weighing 4.5 kilograms.

But his weight stayed the same even after three months, and once even declined to 4.2 kilograms, she said.

Renaldi should have weighed 6 kilograms by now under normal condition.

Oyoh said the baby's mother Maryam left Renaldi with them three months ago because she was unable to cope with the pressure of living in poverty, while the baby’s father, Rohmat, who was also Oyoh’s son, had also left and entrusted the baby to the couple.

“The baby is sick. His stomach bloats and he keeps on crying. But I don’t have any money to take him to a Puskesmas [community health center],” Oyoh said when The Jakarta Post visited her 3-by-7-square meter shanty.

“We only feed him with a Rp 1,500 (16 US cents) sachet of milk we buy at a small stall or starch water [that we take from cooked rice] added with brown sugar.”

Oyoh said she and her husband only made between Rp 10,000 and Rp 15,000 that they earned from making paper bags, while Rohmat, who works as a transportation laborer, did not have a fixed income.

Reynaldi is not the first child to have suffered malnutrition and been left with relatives or abandoned.

Four-year-old Keiza Yulianti, who was left by her mother in a slum area behind Jl. Braga, Bandung, only weighed 6.6 kilograms, while a fully nourished female child of her age should weigh 15 kilograms. Keiza’s mother also came from an impoverished family.

The West Java Health Agency recorded 7,377 malnourished children as of March 2011 in the West Java cities of Bandung, Sukabumi, Cianjur, Garut, Sumedang, Karawang, Majalengka, Kuningan and Cirebon, while 252,255 other children under five years were undernourished. (mtq)