For the Kids' Sake
by Alexandre Spatuzza
Community mobilization is the key to better
environments for children
The shantytown of Glicério, beneath a highway overpass in central São Paulo, presents a host of environmental hazards. They increase the risks of accidental injuries, poisoning, respiratory problems and vector-borne diseases in children.. (All photos ©Alexandre Spatuzza) |
Six-year-old Jonathan Bispo dos Santos is a restless little boy. He makes a game of grabbing things out of people’s hands. And like many children, he finds it hard to sit still. "I like playing football and running around," he tells a visitor while proudly showing off several round red scabs under his shorts.
"Jonathan is terrible," his 22-year-old mother Rute chimes in. "He gets these rashes and doesn’t stop scratching them, so they get all red." Jonathan lives in a three-room brick shack with his mother and three siblings, Jessica, 8, Luiz, 4, and Milena, 3. The children share a tiny windowlessbedroom with a bare-mattress bed, a wardrobe and a handful of toys.
According to Rute, they are normally healthy except for occasional fevers she attributes to the wild temperature fluctuations in São Paulo’s subtropical climate. It’s not uncommon for a daytime high of 30 degrees Celsius (86° F) to be followed by a rainy 15 degrees (59° F) at night.
"When he was younger, he had water in his lungs," says Rute of Jonathan. "But he is all right now with this weather." Jonathan is luckier than his sister Jessica. In her short life she has suffered a collapsed lung, the beginnings of pneumonia, bronchitis and appendicitis, her mother says. On this hot summer afternoon, Jessica is at school, a good 2-kilometer uphill walk through heavy traffic from her house. She seems healthy enough for now, says her mother.
"It’s destiny," says Rute. "I don’t think living conditions have anything to do with it. You can live in a good neighborhood and have health problems too."
The dos Santoses live in São Paulo’s downtown neighborhood of Vale do Anhangabaú, in a compound of six houses. Residents share a central yard strewn with rubble and crisscrossed by clotheslines that droop under the weight of wet laundry. The families get their running water and electricity through illegal tapping. Dirty water from washing and showers runs through the middle of the yard, while the toilets empty into a covered ditch. There are 13 children living in the compound (and three more to be born this year). They share their living and play spaces with rats (fewer now that poison was put out) and abundant cockroaches and mosquitoes. All this is within sight of São Paulo’s City Hall.
Jonathan’s compound is an example of the environmental risks that millions of children in Brazil and throughout the Americas are exposed to every day. The lack of access to treated water and sewage disposal and the presence of vermin are primarily the result of chronic poverty and haphazard urban development. Though Jonathan’s mother sees no connection, experts say environmental conditions like these contribute to an estimated 5 million childhood deaths worldwide every year.
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