Refugee children in Denver malnourished, health foundation steps in
January 30, 2017
Booted from both Bhutan and Nepal, the Acharya family endured 17 years in a United Nations-run refugee camp in the boonies east of Kathmandu.
Food rations there were so meager that in 2008 when Devi Acharya and her two sons were sent to Denver for resettlement, one boy, Angel, weighed only 40 pounds. He wasn’t growing. The Acharyas had barely subsisted on the lentils and rice they received. And neither the U.N. nor the U.S.-backed resettlement agencies have been to address the lingering effects of malnutrition after refugees from Nepal, Congo, Myanmar, Afghanistan and other countries reach Denver.
A Denver nonprofit – the Denver Health Foundation – is stepping in. DHF officials say doctors at the Denver Health Lowry clinic, where newly arrived refugees are screened (1,977 refugees were sent to Colorado last year), face growing numbers of malnourished children. The doctors also have seen cases of borderline frostbite as refugees unfamiliar with cold weather send kids out wearing flip-flops, said Robin Engleberg, the DHF program director…