Yesli's first birthday was just a few days away when we met, but her hair was falling out instead of growing. She was also retaining fluids and suffering from kwashiorkor, a form of severe malnutrition mostly affecting children from poor nations who eat lots of carbs and little protein.

COVID-19 has reached Guatemala. Businesses are shut down. Necessities are sparse. While it sounds all too familiar to the crisis those of us in the US and other Western nations are facing, the difference is that in Guatemala, starvation is an immediate threat. Most workers live day to day with their meager earnings. Guatemala already had a high malnutrition rate of 50%, and when suddenly most of the jobs available to the poor are gone, the threat of starvation is immediate, even if many don’t have that emaciated, long-term hunger look we’re accustomed to seeing in places like Sudan, Africa, for example.