Pasalao

ໃຜມີເວລາແປລາງໃຫ້ຜູ່ອື່ນອ່ານແດ່

My granddaughter was malnourished, I took her to the doctor and he said I wasn't giving her enough fruit. But I have mangoes and papayas outside my house."

Many of us subconsciously look down on those who lack information, but it is rarely through choice, and frequently because they are denied resources and power.

I'm standing outside a nutrition training session that Health Poverty Action is providing in Saravan province in Laos, talking to Pet Samon Bon Piboon, and finding out what happens to people when they are marginalised.

This region is poor and remote. Pet Samon tells me that the people in the towns have access to information, but in rural areas they don't. Communities here lack basic information on nutrition and sanitation, the fruit of research so accessible to us in wealthy countries that we view it as common knowledge. And what sounds so innocuous - missing information - is having deadly consequences.

Across Laos, 40% of children are chronically malnourished and for the poorest communities this figure is as high as 60%. If they survive, malnourished children can be affected for life, growing up stunted and cognitively impaired. For some this is the result of a lack of access to food, for others a lack of information, and for many a combination of the two.

Pet Samon is struggling to change this. She is a nutrition trainer. Around 60 years old, each month she travels along bumpy dirt tracks to visit rural villages in her region. There she provides communities with the information they've so far been denied, on nutrition and sanitation, with an emphasis on nutrition for pregnant women, babies and children. Today she is taking part in some refresher training and I talk to her during the break.

"We didn't know we should give her the fruit, we thought it might be poisonous." Pet Samon explains why her grandchild was sick when the very food she needed was growing outside her home.

Since that day she has been working tirelessly to ensure others have the information she lacked, and she proudly tells me that since she started passing on information to people in her own village none of the children there are malnourished but that she still has work to do in other villages. Pet Samon is charismatic and warm, so I'm not surprised to hear that when she visits the villages, everyone attends her training.

Health Poverty Action is providing this training for people like Pet Samon, who are struggling to improve the health of their communities. Around 40 people are here, all giving up their time voluntarily to become nutrition trainers, because they all want to improve the health of their communities. These 40 people disseminate the information their villages are lacking, increasing the collective knowledge of their communities and saving lives.

In this world in which the gap between the rich and poor is increasing, it is people like Pet Samon who are bearing the brunt, and struggling for health.