Neither the best double of Hollywood action movies, nor the best film director in the world would have achieved the risk scene that Cloromiro Largacha starred in last Wednesday night in Cali, in the east of the city.
This Chocoano, who has lived in the capital of Valle del Cauca for 25 years, jumped into the turbulent waters of the Cauca River to save the life of a six-year-old boy who had been thrown out by his mother. The woman also jumped into the waters of the river, but she swam and reached the shore. Later, she was rescued by firefighters.
(Read in context: Cloromiro, the savior of the child who fell into the Cauca River with his mother)
The portly Cloromiro, who derives his family’s livelihood from his work at a lumber company specializing in plywood, is the hero of Cali, without a doubt. Not even the actor Tom Cruise, who likes to do the risk scenes in his films, dared so much.
The pride that Caleños feel for Cloromiro was expressed by the city’s mayor, Jorge Iván Ospina, in a tribute they organized to recognize his courage.
“We are more the good ones, those committed to life, those of us who are expressing the main principles of a society, by acting, such as solidarity, andhe accompaniment and caring for life, and that is what Cloromiro has done by saving the life of a child,” said Ospina.
Today we recognized Cloromiro Largacha for his solidarity and courage. He is a Cali hero who saved the life of a 6-year-old boy who had been thrown into the Cauca River.
Cloromiro, who is the father of two daughters and a follower of salsa and Pacific rhythms, responded to the Mayor’s words with some surprise: “I feel stunned because I am aware that what I did was an act of courage. I am thrilled to have saved this little boy’s life. With this I have been able to reflect that in my life I have learned many values that have led me to risk them for many good causes”, he said.
(We recommend: ‘Women meet to talk about life in the Cali River’)
A man with the qualities as a rescuer of Cloromiro cannot be wasted and for this reason the Mayor’s Office, through the Secretariats of Government and Risk Management, offered him the opportunity to train as a preventionist, and to support with their knowledge the activities related to emergency care. Cloromiro accepted the offer.
The prevention strategy, of which Cloromiro will be a part, will reach communes 8, 9, 13, 14, 15 and 16, as well as the villages of Montebello, Golondrinas, La Castilla and La Elvira. Registrations are open.
(Also read: ‘Mano, we are trapped’, last voice of two disappeared in Pance)
“I am very happy, very grateful to the Mayor’s Office and the media for the recognition they give me for something that came from my heart. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened to the boy if I didn’t jump into the river to help him. I feel that we are going to be united and when he grows up he will thank me, ”said Cloromiro, who also received gifts for him and his family.
In the drama where a mother throws her son into the Cauca River and then follows him in what seemed like two certain deaths, a man appeared who decided to save the boy and succeeded in those waters, under the darkness.
(Read in context: Drama of a woman who threw herself with her son into the Cauca River in Cali)
After 7:00 pm on Wednesday, March 3, Cloromiro Largacha was walking with a brother, after his shift at a wood company specializing in plywood.
They left the industrial sector of the La Dolores corregimiento, in the Palmira jurisdiction, separated from Cali by the Cauca River bridge, in the so-called Paso del Comercio.
Both were walking in a hurry in search of a transport, because Cloromiro had had a problem with his motorcycle.
Under the dim lights of the public lighting service they saw when a woman and a child entered from the other side of the Cauca river bridge. Suddenly, in an act that was amazing, she picked up the child and threw him into those waters.
Cloromiro Largacha, is the man who saved the five-year-old boy who was thrown from the Paso del Comercio bridge into the Cauca River. pic.twitter.com/SOczw1VAiF
It was an uncertain fall from that bridge inaugurated in 1978. Cloromiro, a stocky man, looked out and saw the boy struggling to survive.
He did not think for a second and threw himself into the flow of that river that runs 1,350 kilometers between seven departments of Colombia.
It was not an easy decision in that darkness and in a river that has been affected by pollution along its way.
Cloromiro advanced thanks to the fact that he is a good swimmer and he saw how the boy was swimming his arms. Then he got closer to her and managed to grab her.
He says that he felt how the seconds passed and passed until he reached the shore. Her brother and others approached them to help them out of the water and onto the road. The 5-year-old boy asked where his mother was.
She also swung her arms and was able to get out and stayed in that area where there are bushes. Minutes later the firefighters and the police appeared.
The minor was sheltered and loaded into a vehicle to be taken first to a health center. There he was notified to the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF).
The commander of the Metropolitan Police of Cali, Brigadier General Juan Carlos León, said that the community reported the case and agents from the Group for the Protection of Children and Adolescents arrived, who began the route of reestablishing children’s rights, with the ICBF.
The mother showed a state of alteration and the authorities were reviewing the prosecution process that would be for the crime of attempted homicide.
This story moved me. Not only because of Cloromiro’s heroism, but also trying to understand what can lead a mother to commit such a terrible act. She needs help and Cloromiro deserves our recognition. https://t.co/l3F2N33imZ
His medical assessment will also be awaited to establish if he has alterations in his mental health. It is not clear why she made that determination to throw herself into the waters with the child.
Cloromiro Largacha says that it was seeing a son in danger when he threw himself into the uncertainty of falling into the Cauca River at night. In networks they asked for recognition for that act of heroism.
Read more news from Colombia
Term for the payment of the Congestion Charge in Cali is extended
In the drama where a mother throws her son into the Cauca River and then follows him in what seemed like two certain deaths, a man appeared who decided to save the boy and succeeded in those waters, under the darkness.
(Read in context: Drama of a woman who threw herself with her son into the Cauca River in Cali)
After 7:00 pm on Wednesday, March 3, Cloromiro Largacha was walking with a brother, after his shift at a wood company specializing in plywood.
They left the industrial sector of the La Dolores corregimiento, in the Palmira jurisdiction, separated from Cali by the Cauca River bridge, in the so-called Paso del Comercio.
Both were walking in a hurry in search of a transport, because Cloromiro had had a problem with his motorcycle.
Under the dim lights of the public lighting service they saw when a woman and a child entered from the other side of the Cauca river bridge. Suddenly, in an act that was amazing, she picked up the child and threw him into those waters.
Cloromiro Largacha, is the man who saved the five-year-old boy who was thrown from the Paso del Comercio bridge into the Cauca River. pic.twitter.com/SOczw1VAiF
It was an uncertain fall from that bridge inaugurated in 1978. Cloromiro, a stocky man, looked out and saw the boy struggling to survive.
He did not think for a second and threw himself into the flow of that river that runs 1,350 kilometers between seven departments of Colombia.
It was not an easy decision in that darkness and in a river that has been affected by pollution along its way.
Cloromiro advanced thanks to the fact that he is a good swimmer and he saw how the boy was swimming his arms. Then he got closer to her and managed to grab her.
He says that he felt how the seconds passed and passed until he reached the shore. Her brother and others approached them to help them out of the water and onto the road. The 5-year-old boy asked where his mother was.
She also swung her arms and was able to get out and stayed in that area where there are bushes. Minutes later the firefighters and the police appeared.
The minor was sheltered and loaded into a vehicle to be taken first to a health center. There he was notified to the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF).
The commander of the Metropolitan Police of Cali, Brigadier General Juan Carlos León, said that the community reported the case and agents from the Group for the Protection of Children and Adolescents arrived, who began the route of reestablishing children’s rights, with the ICBF.
The mother showed a state of alteration and the authorities were reviewing the prosecution process that would be for the crime of attempted homicide.
This story moved me. Not only because of Cloromiro’s heroism but also trying to understand what can lead a mother to commit such a terrible act. She needs help and Cloromiro deserves our recognition. https://t.co/l3F2N33imZ
His medical assessment will also be awaited to establish if he has alterations in his mental health. It is not clear why she made this determination to jump into the water with the child.
Cloromiro Largacha says that it was seeing a son in danger when he threw himself into the uncertainty of falling into the Cauca River at night. In networks they asked for recognition for that act of heroism.
Read more news from Colombia
Term for the payment of the Congestion Charge in Cali is extended
Marco’s story is typical of a movie script. From his birth, to the tenacity of his mother, Aurora Mateos, to bring together an international group of experts to promote a new therapy against Menkes disease tested in animal models in research at the University of Texas (USA) and whose results, published in the journal “Science”, are relevant.
The Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in Barcelona, with the pediatrician and geneticist Francesc Palau in front, is carrying out this exceptional treatment, without prior clinical trial, and which has the authorization of the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) for a child who lives against the clock.
They have only been in therapy for four weeks, but the doctors are already seeing improvements in Marco. They do not want to throw the bells on the fly, since there is still no data to prove it, but the fact is that in this time he has managed to crawl and stand up with help, something that at his age he could not do due to severe hypotonia (muscle weakness). , among other symptoms of the disease.
“Marco did not crawl and has started to do so. This can also respond to the natural history of the child and, instead of having a regression, he is advanced ”, he comments cautiously to EFE. Dr. Palau, director of the Pediatric Institute for Rare Diseases and head of the Genetics Service at Hospital Sant Joan de Déu.
What is Menkes disease?
Menkes disease is a serious multisystemic syndrome of copper metabolism that affects 1 in 300,000 newborns in Europe, according to data from the Orphanet rare disease portal.
It is characterized by progressive systemic degeneration and connective tissue abnormalities due to poor copper distribution that does not reach the brain and other organs.
This disorder is due to the absence or alteration of the ATP7A gene, which is located on the X chromosome, and this means that women are healthy carriers, they do not develop the disease, but they can transmit it to their sons, although boys can also being born with a “novo” mutation, with no family history.
The key is not only to provide the copper that Marco’s body lacks, but also for this mineral necessary for life to cross the blood-brain barrier and reach the brain.
Until now no drug does that function. Only one, the copper histidinateis used as palliative treatment but fails to cross the brain barrier.
Marco, a child with an early diagnosis
When the coronavirus pandemic hit Aurora Mateos She was working provisionally in Rome for the United Nations and had to give birth to Marco in that city, in June 2020.
“When someone sees a Menkes child, they don’t forget it,” says the mother, who explains that they are born with curly hair and very white skin, characteristics for a first suspected diagnosis.
He was immediately transferred to the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome where there is a copper unit, something unusual, and that made it easier for the child to have a diagnosis at five days of life and at the time he was injected with copper histidinate, an orphan drug.
“It seems that in the first days of birth the brain barrier is softer and it is possible that the copper could have entered. Perhaps for this reason, Marco improves his mobility, he does not have seizures, his outward appearance is so beautiful… ”, the mother tells EFE, who emphasizes that he is an “intelligent and alert” baby.
Photo: Paula Bustos
Despite early diagnosis, one of the challenges of rare diseases, Menkes disease has run its course: “It is a lethal disease, Marco has lung, bladder, neurological problems… it is a multi-system affectation,” he explains. .
When the pandemic allowed it, Marco’s family moved to live in Malaga and in the Maternal-Children’s Hospital in that city they do clinical follow-up of the child.
“Our life is medicalized, visiting the hospital at least twice a week, we cannot travel to a place where there is no center prepared to care for Marco…”, says Aurora Mateos.
The little boy is immunosuppressed, “he is a crystal child, he cannot go to daycare and you have to protect yourself with a mask to touch him… the family is afraid to come and that is hard when you need support,” laments the mother.
Special care in times of coronavirus: “He is a child who frequently goes to the emergency room and with the pandemic you don’t know how to get it right.” Sometimes the collapsed emergency has given them a scare.
“I did not sit idly by”
Marco and his mother Aurora Mateos. Photo: Paula Bustos.
After the diagnosis, “I didn’t sit idly by,” says Aurora Mateos.
As a struggling mother, supported by her family, and with her experience as a consultant at the United Nations, she has managed not only to organize the association “Menkes International”but to promote a committee with twenty experts (doctors, biologists, pharmacists, lawyers…) from twelve countries that has managed the complex protocol of this exceptional treatment.
The starting point is in the study with animal models from the University of Texas, led by James Sacchettini and published in May 2020 in “Science”, in which one molecule is used, elesclomolto transport copper and cross the brain of mice with ATP7A gene deficiency.
“The results are striking, with two doses the mouse changed completely in terms of mobility, hair and survival. From only living twenty days to reaching almost 190, which in a mouse is a lot”, explains Dr. Francesc Palau, who coordinates the aforementioned scientific committee.
The scientist James Sachettini was involved from the beginning in getting this drug to Marco. The following steps were complex until elesclomol-copper was synthesized in a laboratory in India.
The Spanish Medicines Agency authorized the importation of the drug and the design of the “exceptional treatment” for Marco at the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, with experience in previously caring for seven other patients and with an open line of research on this rare disease.
Every week, since January 31, Marco and his family travel from Malaga to Barcelona so that the little boy receives a subcutaneous dose of elesclomol-copper.
“We have started with very low doses, subtherapeutic, to gradually reach therapeutic but non-toxic ones. At the same time, we measure copper in the blood to see if we are raising elesclomol-copper and lowering histidinate”, explains Palau, also former director of the CIBER for Rare Diseases.
A clinical trial on the horizon
After a few months, data will be obtained that will determine the efficacy of this treatment in Marco and then a clinical trial will be opened that must be authorized by the regulatory agencies and whose objective will be to test the efficacy and safety of the therapy.
“I have a commitment to the Medicines Agency to design this trial. We are in contact with the North American company that owns the drug, which is interested,” says the researcher.
One of the keys is to select the candidate patients: “If it worked in Marco, it doesn’t mean that it works in all patients, we have to be careful,” says the doctor, who is already receiving calls from hospitals in other European and Latin American countries.
The hope is that this therapy pioneered by Marco can pave the way for other children with Menkes disease.
“Marco is what I love the most and we are going to fight this war until the end, no matter how many battles there are, no one is going to give up,” concludes Aurora Mateos.
The ravages of the heavy rains left a child dead and more than 20 houses affected by the downpours and landslides that occurred this Sunday in the town center of Valencia de la Paz, a rural region of the municipality of Iquira, Huila.
Jaime Toro, councilor of Iquira, affirmed that “a tragedy happened to us because we have a child buried by landslides and more than 20 houses with collateral damage due to rains.”
(Also: Mining tragedies in the country during 2022 leave 36 dead)
“Water fell on us all Saturday night and early this Sunday,” added the councilman.
The deceased child was identified as José Mauricio Guaguas Barrios, 5 years old, a preschool student in Iquira, a municipality in western Huila located about 2 hours by car from Neiva.
Witnesses pointed out that a huge landslide fell on the house of the parents of the child “who slept in his bed, and died instantly.”
(Also read: Ideam warns of increased rainfall)
“Everything was fast, nothing could be done by the minor’s parents to save him,” they said.
Added to the previous damage is the state of risk in which 80 families live in a settlement in the town center of Valencia de la Paz, where its inhabitants affirmed that “we expect help from the national government and the government of Huila.”
The rains also affected the Iquira aqueduct, as well as the roads in the villages of San Francisco, Río Iquira and Chaparro, which remain cut off from the urban area.
(In other news: Landslide in Manizales leaves 3 dead, including a child and his grandfather)
The mayor of Iquira, Yadnolver Correa Tamayo, meets this Sunday with the emergency committee to study the declaration of public calamity due to winter wave.
The number of children in America living in poverty jumped dramatically after just one month without the expanded child tax credit payments, according to a new study. Advocates fear the lapse in payments could unravel what they say were landmark achievements in poverty reduction.
Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy estimates 3.7 million more children were living in poverty by January — a 41% increase from December, when families received their last check. The federal aid started last July but ended after President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill stalled in the sharply divided Congress. Payments of up to $300 per child were delivered directly to bank accounts on the 15th of each month, and last week marked the second missed deposit of the year.
The Columbia study, which combines annual U.S. Census data with information from the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey bulletins, found that the monthly child poverty rate increased from 12.1% in December to 17% in January. That’s the highest level since December 2020, when the U.S. was grappling with high unemployment and a resurgence of COVID-19. Black and Latino children experienced the highest percentage point increases in poverty — 5.9% and 7.1% respectively.
Megan Curran, policy director for the Center on Poverty and Social Policy, said the sudden spike shows how quickly the payments became core to household financial stability for millions of families after only six months.
“It really had a huge impact right off the bat,” Curran said. “We saw food insecurity drop almost immediately as soon as the payments started … all of that progress that we made could now be lost.”
Curran said the increase in children living in poverty could also partially reflect rising prices.
The new numbers represent a serious setback from the original goals of the child tax credit program, which ambitiously sought to cut nationwide child poverty in half. As part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package last year, the existing child tax credit program was massively reshaped, boosting the amount of the payments, greatly expanding the pool of eligible families and delivering the money in monthly installments designed to be incorporated into day-to-day household budgets.
The program extended payments of $250-per-month for children ages 6 through 17 and $300-per-month for those under 6 to most families in the country, at an annual cost of about $120 billion. The goal was to put discretionary cash in the hands of parents along with the freedom to spend it as they saw fit month-to-month.
Republican lawmakers are generally unified in opposition to the expanded tax credit — describing it as excessive, inflationary and a disincentive to work. But when it was originally passed, many Democrats openly declared their intention to make the payments a permanent anchor of the American social safety net.
The goal for the Democratic-held Congress was to keep the program running, and fight about its future months from now, armed with data and millions of anecdotes about the tax credit’s benefits.
Instead the 50-member Democratic bloc in the Senate collapsed from within, with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin holding out on his vote for weeks before finally refusing to endorse Biden’s social spending package. Manchin cited his opposition to the child tax credit’s massive price tag among his reservations with the bill.
Earlier this month, Manchin called negotiations on Biden’s Build Back Better bill “dead.”
Democratic New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, one of the expanded child tax credit’s strongest advocates, said Wednesday in a statement to The Associated Press that nearly all the children in his state benefited from the credit and that letting it expire was “a moral failure.”
An informal survey conducted of families by the nonprofit advocacy group ParentsTogether Action found a similarly immediate impact to the lapsed child tax credit payments for respondents, with roughly 1 in 5 families surveyed reporting they could no longer afford housing or enough food for their kids.
Allison Johnson, the organization’s campaign director, said the child tax credit payments were designed so parents would “not have to make these really hard choices,” she said.
The end to the deposits makes it nearly impossible for needy families, who may be struggling to pay down debt or cope with major expenses, to develop financial stability or momentum, Johnson said.
“This lack of clarity is super difficult for people. It makes them unable to plan for things,” she said.
An alleged case of child abuse was denounced this Saturday by the community of the La Sierrita neighborhood of Barranquilla, thanks to a video in which a woman is seen giving him hitting a minor 11 months on public roads.
(Also read: They denounce attacks on young people who did pedagogy against vote buying)
In the recording, the child appears crying while the accused insults him, hitting him repeatedly on his face and belly, and then forcing him to walk.
Call the Police! You are going to kill him! don’t mess it up like that
The fact generated indignation in the neighbors, who reacted and rejected the violent act they were witnessing. However, the woman continued to strongly assault the minor.
“Stop, walk!” the woman yelled at the child. To which his own neighbors responded: “Call the Police! You are going to kill him! Do not spoil it like that ”, was heard in the video, before the crying of the victim.
HELP! Humiliated, outraged and beaten. It is urgent that @FiscaliaCol@ICBFColombia arrest the person responsible for such brutal child abuse. In wasap they affirm that she was in the La Sierrita neighborhood of Barranquilla. I do not know if it is true, but where it has been, it is urgent to protect the baby. #MPHPpic.twitter.com/Qe0eMT2LpH
(You may be interested in: The new strategy so that the Atlantic people do not depend on the ‘paid newspaper’)
The intervention of the Police and ICBF
Given this complaint, the operational commander of the Barranquilla Metropolitan Police, Lieutenant Colonel Luis Sandoval, indicated that units of the Group for the Protection of Children and Adolescents they identified the mother and the ICBF was informed.
“The minor and a sister, 7 years old, were separated from their family nucleus for the restitution of rights and left at the disposal of the ICBF,” said the authority.
He added that the Group for Children and Adolescents had carried out a process against the parents of these minors, after the girl evaded the family nucleus and invited the citizens to take care of the children and adolescents.
BARRANQUILLA
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When childhood cancer runs in the family, it’s not just a challenge to address the disease. Parents also face the moment of explaining to the child that he has a disease and all the stages that he is going to go through. The story “Teo discovers cancer” can help on the International Day of Children with Cancer.
Image of the story “Teo discovers Cancer”. Photo courtesy Bayer
This children’s story is part of an initiative developed by the Bayer company in collaboration with family associations and experts from reference centers and covers the different stages that a child cancer patient experiences, from the moment of diagnosis.
Every year there are 15 new cases of cancer per 100,000 inhabitants in children under 14 years of age, with a five-year survival rate of 81%.
“Teo discovers cancer” is a children’s story illustrated by Violeta Denou that goes through the different stages that a child patient experiences from the moment of diagnosis and uses easy language accessible to children.
The stories of TEO emerged in 1977 and have accompanied generations in their educational process and whose edition is carried out by Planeta.
Cover of the story “Teo discovers cancer”. Courtesy photo
Participating in this initiative are the family associations AFANOC (Association of Relatives and Friends of Oncological Children of Catalonia) and PYFANO (Association of Parents, Relatives and Friends of Oncological Children of Castilla y León).
Experts from reference centers such as the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Sant Joan de Déu in Barcelona (KIDS Barcelona group), and the Spanish Society of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology (SEHOP) have also collaborated.
For Irene Costa of the AFANOC association, this book “is an example of the work we carry out in the association, to talk about the reality of cancer in a natural way, without taboos, without forbidden words, and allowing emotions and sensations to surface, which is It’s important that they come to light.”
Oncologist Raquel Hladun, from the Vall d’Hebron Hospital of Barcelona, points out: “Childhood cancer is still a rare disease, but thanks to research, survival rates have been achieved that are really favorable”.
According to the doctor, “having materials that deal with the subject with such affection and tenderness, with which we can explain to affected children what their daily life is going to be like from now on, is something necessary.”
The man who was almost lynched last weekend in the La Luz neighborhood, south of Barranquillawhen accused of sexual abuse of a six-year-old boy, regained his freedom, for not having been caught in flagrante delicto.
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This was reported, through a statement, the Metropolitan Police of Barranquilla explaining that the case is under investigation. “As there is no flagrante delicto, the man is released, but linked to the investigative process,” the communication states.
(Be sure to read: How is the homicide investigation of LGBTI leader Cristina Cantillo progressing?)
It transpired that the investigation was taken over by a special group from the police.
The accused is a taxi driver identified as Luis Javier Ortega, who is accused of having been committing the abuse for some time.
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When it became known, several neighbors and inhabitants of the La Luz neighborhood beat him up, for which the presence of the Police was necessary and they took him to the dungeons.
“Immediately the care protocol was activated and the minor was transferred to a care center,” underlines the Police statement.
“Everything they say about me is false”
In an interview with Emisora Atlántico Luis Xavier Ortega He assured that he has nothing to do with what he is accused of and that everything they say about him is false.
“Everything that is said on social networks is false. My stepdaughter is the mother of the minor and she has had her in her possession for seven days, ”Ortega said in the interview, in which he said that he filed legal actions against the girl’s mother and other relatives.
Ortega emphasized that he was released because they found nothing to incriminate him and that he has no criminal record.
