Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Nairobi (Agenzia Fides) – Aid workers in a camp for some 80,000 refugees in northwest Kenya have in six months slashed acute child malnutrition rates by doubling the provision of nutritional supplements, scaling up feeding and adopting community feeding programs. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of severely malnourished children in Kakuma has diminished from 17 percent to 7.9 percent, from 1,800 in November 2009 to fewer than 1,200 in June 2010. According to Kakuma Medical Unit, 70 percent of acute malnutrition cases reported in December 2009 were among the 13,100 Somali refugees relocated from Dadaab, in northeast Kenya, at the beginning of the same month. With the new nutrition programs, every morning children are given therapeutic food under the supervision of nutrition nurses. In addition, mothers are trained and supported in how to feed their child and linked to a mother-to-mother support group. After the child has started improving, and the mother is well versed in how to look after it, visits to the treatment center are reduced to once a week and the mother is given one week’s supply of therapeutic food to use at home. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 8/7/2010)
