Melagum’s Story
At the Konso Health Center we met a young mother, Kuni, who brought her two-year-old son, Melagum, to the Center for care. She told us that she brought him to the Center when she noticed that his body was swelling.
She was sure that he had a disease, but was told by the health center staff that he was suffering from edema-- swelling of the face, arms and legs. He was retaining fluid due to a lack of sufficient protein in the blood.
This is the most severe form of malnutrition, and is why, despite other indicators being normal, a child with edema is immediately admitted to the program.
The health center staff, trained by Save the Children to identify and treat malnourishment in children, explained that once the edema is gone, he will receive a fortified liquid, F100, to help him gain weight, and then Plumpy’nut, to eat and carry home. Plumpy’nut is a ready-to-use therapeutic food made of peanuts paste and fortified with vitamins and minerals. Chidren can eat it directly from foil packets.
All children who leave the stabilization center are enrolled in the outpatient therapeutic care program. They return once a week for their mid upper arm measurement (MUAC), to be weighed and to receive more food. If a child is not gaining weight, a health volunteer trained by Save the Children will be dispatched to the home of the child to observe how the mother and father are feeding the child.
According to Kuni, the family’s crop of sorghum had been lost. “We are eating maize from last year’s crop, but we have only two weeks left of food.” When asked how she planned to feed her family, she replied, “Since there is no rain from God we can’t do anything.”
Other mothers in the Health Center told us that they were eating local potatoes and shifarew, a leafy weed, to get by. “My husband is a farmer, but there is no work now. Once we can leave the center, I will have to find some kind of work to feed our family,” said Kuni.
The Drought
The people of Konso, located near the Kenyan border of Southern Ethiopia, rely on farming and animal rearing for their livelihood. Families in this region grow sorghum and corn (maize). These crops provide the main food (daba) and drink (chaka) for their diet. Unfortunately, the rain in the past three years has been below average and the rain from January to May (belg) didn’t come at all.
Along the 90 kilometer road from Arbe Minch to Konso we could see the crops literally dying in the field. Riverbeds along the route were bone dry. People had begun to cut their crops before they were useless. They were selling what was left to feed their cattle. In the market women were selling the maize for 3 birr (.25 cents) for people to feed their livestock.
When we visited the Monday market, it was clear that not only the drought, but the major food price increase, was leaving families with few ptions. In January 2008, a can of corn (4 kilos) cost 7 birr (.80 cents). In July 2008, the price of that same can of corn was 40 birr ($4.00)--an impossible price to pay for most families.
The regional health bureau, seeing an overload in cases of malnourished children in Konso in May, called on Save the Children to do an assessment of need, train health center staff, health extension workers and community volunteers, and provide supplies for community-based therapeutic centers. As of July 2008, we had reached 783 children with severe acute malnutrition in 9 outpatient therapeutic programs (OTP), and 113 in 1 stabilization center in the Konso area.
The Future
While seeing Melagum’s recovery was an encouraging site, the truth is that more and more children are being diagnosed with severe malnutrition on a daily basis. And while Konso has one of the highest official rates of severe, acute malnutrition in children, other parts of the country are seeing dramatic increases now too.
It is clear that without additional resources, children will die. According to the government’s own figures, at least 75,000 children are at risk of dying unless they receive emergency treatment.
At the very least we are expecting a large decline in school enrollment rates as children prepare to return to school in September. In many parts of the country children have less food in their homes now than they did in June (at the end of the school year), and so the impact of the drought is being felt now.
Children will miss school because they will need to work or beg, and they will miss school because a child can’t concentrate on an empty stomach. Children are always the most at risk in a food crisis, vulnerable to weight loss, malnutrition and illness. Ethiopian children, who are going hungry because their parents can’t afford to feed them, will be among the first victims of the global food price rises.
