The Washington Post published this photo-essay by writer Chloe Coleman about an 8-year-old boy from San Cristobal, Totonicapán, with T Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia. The piece is drawn from Scott Woodward’s documentary film project, “How I Live,” that looks into children’s cancer in resource-limited countries. “The treatment of childhood cancer in the developed world is largely viewed as a success story, with survival rates as high as 80%. By contrast, in Low and Middle Income Countries, the child cancer survival rate averages just 20%.”
To me, the essay is powerful on two levels–first, because of the boy’s brave journey in the face of cancer. And second, because the images convey rural daily life as it is lived by a majority of Guatemalans, in a way not often seen or recorded.
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