Infant feeding practices of migrant farm laborers in northern Colorado

Abstract

Additional health and nutritional problems among migrant farmworker children include below-average height, upper respiratory 5 infections, skin infections, chronic diarrhea, vitamin A deficiency, and baby bottle mouth syndrome (where the upper four central teeth rot from constant contact with a nipple containing a sugarliquid) (Select Conmittee on Hunger, 1986;Schneider, 1986). V The inhumane conditions and plight of migrant infants and children were addressed by Steve Allen (1966) in his book, TIE _Ci r_gu_L1_d_ E ggg _' ILa_b_Le. He recounted Fred Van Dyke's address before the Stockton Council of Churches about a migrant farnworker's parked car ' with three young children in it. The youngest child, an infant, was screaming from pain. Suffering from diarrhea, he had been soiling himelf all day without being cleansed or changed, and the flesh on the lower part of his body was raw. The next oldest was burning with a high fever. The oldest child, a five or six year old, was unconscious and near death. The parents were picking crops in a nearby orchard. Van Dyke said something had to be done. Five years later, a baby left in a car while his parents worked in the same field choked to death on his own vomit. Migrant infants and children are truly a high risk population in term of nutrition and health. The extreme poverty, high mobility,and detrimental living environment make them and their parents a group iumensely in need of supplemental services to provide iumediate and basic needs (Cavenaugh et al., 1977). MigrantThe Migrant Head Start Center is one program that exclusively addresses the needs of migrant infants and children. Eligibility criteria for enrollment in the Summer Migrant Head Start Program