Summary Of Bom Jesus Da Mat

Write a paragraph addressing what types of help the women in the article required that they were not getting. How did the institutions of government, religion, and medicine fail the women, according to the article?

The women of Bom Jesus da Mata require education and compassion, yet they receive neither. They people of the shantytown work for meager wages and are not permitted to bring their children inside their workplaces, so they must often leave the children at home, often alone. The babies are often basked in uncleanliness, laying in their own filth, waiting to die from starvation or malnutrition. If not from lack of nutrients, babies die from diseases, many of which are treatable in the industrialized world. However, they are not given the proper help by the city-employed doctors in the area. There seems to be a lack of understanding regarding basic physiology and doctors hand out medicine or tonics to dying babies; worse, other
doctors simply administer sleeping pills or tranquilizers to babies who are “meant,” to die. In addition, diseases can be stigmatized and seen as the evil eye or some magical force. In actuality, I imagine, they are simply products of unhealthy pregnancy and living habits. In addition, the government’s handling of the raging infant mortality rate is lackluster and sloppy. Rather than searching for new and better ways to take care of children, baby coffins are simply handed out like candy. Death thrives at Bom Jesus, shallow and unmarked graves of infants frequenting the graveyard.
Even more so when there is a food or water shortage. Some women will abandon their sicker babies to look after the healthier ones, not out of malice, but rationalism. Death is not viewed the same way it that town as it is in the United States. Fighting death is futile, the baby dying is viewed as God’s will. A midwife in the article stated that if she sees a baby who was born unwell, she will tell the mother to let the child die, to accept God’s will. Expressing grief is discouraged because the death of infants is viewed as children returning to God to serve him and his saints. Instead, you should accept it and express joy over your child being chosen to serve the almighty and his saints. The church has fought this viewpoint, turning away dying babies for baptism. Instead, they urge mothers to go home and help their children, as Jesus doesn’t need all the babies being sent. The people of the village see this as the church forsaking
them.