The newspaper also spoke with an aunt of Kimara, Claryssa Robinson, who said that her niece went to the hospital on Sunday with a fever and died a day later. The child was taken to the Northern Regional Hospital, on Sunday, June 12, Cardona said, after he and a group from Confrontation Youth Group were conducting house-to-house visits to the families, after a survey carried out by the Ministry of Education in Orange Walk earlier showed that approximately 1,500 children in the area were living in deplorable conditions. Cardona said that the child was convulsing when he arrived at the house, and they immediately took her to the hospital. He said that he went to the hospital to visit the child the following day, she had a very high fever. ?I got a call about 15 minutes after I left, informing me that she had died,? said Cardona. Cardona said that the child was diagnosed as being malnourished because the mother, Dareth Robinson, 20, who resides in a house with her two other children, including an-11-month-old child, a sister, and her sister?s three children, does not have money to provide enough meals to sustain the children. Cardona said that many of the families in the village don?t only suffer from malnutrition or are on the verge of suffering, but that some of the children go to school on hungry stomachs, and this is added to the fact that they are not properly or cleanly clothed. Some go to school barefoot or with torn shoes, said Cardona, who added that the deplorable living conditions experienced there worsened because many of the residents are jobless. The fact that so many BSI workers got laid off recently has only contributed to the problem, said Cardona. The child was laid to rest on Tuesday in her home village, after funeral expenses and arrangements were covered by the Confrontation Youth Group. Cardona joins the School Community Liaison Officers in Orange Walk, Teodoro Garcia, and Janet Escalante, in pleading to the business community and families at large to render any assistance they can to these families, with shoes, used clothing, stationery or any thing that could be useful. They make this plea by adding a Bible verse: ?When I was hungry, you fed me; when I was thirsty, you gave me to drink. I was a stranger and you took care of me in prison and you visited me.? (Matthew 25:26) According to the survey carried out, all 36 schools in Orange Walk District have at least 15 students who are experiencing one of these adverse conditions.
