Health Problems among Migrant Farm Workers and Children

Obviously we all know that the health of the average migrant worker is pretty bad-what with working in the intense heat, being exposed to pesticides and having little resources for maintaining good health, it's not a big surprise.

But when I read this article from the U.S. Eric Digest (http://www.ericdigests.org/1993/migrant.htm)
and learned that the infant mortality rate for migrant children is 125% higher than the national average, I was shocked. When I saw that about 300 migrant children died from work-related injuries in 4 years, I was outraged.

Agricultural labor is definitely one of the most difficult professions one can have, so it's expected that accidents will happen and injuries will occur; it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. It's a fallacy that migrant children as young as ten years old often have to spend their childhood working alongside their parents in fields and factories, just to help their family get by. Unfortunately there's no way of changing that.

But there IS a way to keep migrant children from dying from accidental and heat related injuries, and death from chemical poisoning can definitely be prevented. Laws and legal protection for migrant workers and their families, which is currently limited, needs to be strengthened and well enforced; migrant workers need to be educated in the best ways to care for themselves and their families while doing fieldwork; migrant families need access to drinking water and shade.

A good 90% of the health issues migrant workers and their families are dealing with can be prevented; so why aren't they being prevented?