Results of Our Prevention Program

Two years ago Patronato Pro Niños embarked upon a Prevention Program targeting two of the most prevalent problems seen in the area - diarrhea and malnutrition. With the cooperation of the San Miguel de Allende Health Department, Salubridad, we chose the town of La Campana with a population of approximately 1,000 for our study.

The town’s water wells had run dry and water was being delivered to the town in tank trucks and placed in open barrels, exposing the water to every kind of contamination. Determining that this contaminate water supply was the chief cause of the children’s diarrhea, we installed two huge 5,000 - liter covered tanks and arranged to have potable water delivered to them on a regular basis.

Then, in conjunction with the Mexican National Institute of Nutrition, we attacked the malnutrition problem by providing the town with pre-measured, pre-packaged doses of nutrients that could be added to the tortillas that were made there every day.

Our plan was to make a year-long comparison between La Campana, with its improved water supply and nutrition, and another, comparable town without these improved conditions.

The program has now completed its first year and we are pleased to announce that cases of diarrhea were down by 75% and the cases of malnutrition were down by more than 50%. More specifically, the number of cases of severe malnutrition was reduced from fifteen cases to two!

Now that we can document how successful this kind of program is, we have become a similar program in four additional villages.

Adopt A Village: You can sponsor one of these villages for a year by donating $1,000 US or $11,000 pesos to Patronato Pro Ninos and specifying that you want it to fund our Prevention program in one of these five target villages