BELINA ARBA, FEDIS, 25 July 2011 – Genete Mohammed carries her 18-month-old daughter Iman to the Belina Arba Health Post in drought-affected Fedis District in Eastern Ethiopia for the weekly UNICEF-supported outpatient therapeutic programme (OTP). Report by Indrias Getachew
VIDEO: UNICEF correspondent Chris Niles reports on UNICEF efforts to treat malnourished children in eastern Ethiopia.
Drought has resulted in high levels of malnutrition among children in affected districts like Fedis, with an estimated 312,740 severely malnourished children requiring urgent life-saving treatment.
UNICEF provides support
UNICEF has supported Ethiopia to increase national capacity to treat severe acute malnutrition in drought and food insecure districts like Fedis from almost nothing in 2004 to 8,800 sites today. Additionally, UNICEF has assisted the Ministry and Regional Bureaus of Health with the training of health extension workers in outpatient therapeutic feeding. UNICEF also provides the RUTFs, nutritional supplements, medicines and other inputs such as weighing scales and MUAC tapes that are required for the programme.
Families with malnourished children don’t have to go far from home to receive life-saving interventions provided by health workers from their local communities. In fact, in most cases, children can be treated at home - unless they have complications like fever or diarrhea. This enables parents to continue working on their farms without having to leave their other children unattended.
Child survival rates in Ethiopia have improved significantly in recent years with advances in child nutrition playing a major role. In 1990, more than twenty per cent of children would not survive to reach their fifth birthday, with malnutrition being an underlying factor in more than half of all under-five child deaths. By 2010 this number had been cut by half.
The on-going drought emergency is, however, threatening these child-survival gains. Systems that have been put in place to save children’s lives are now stretched as a result of the drought.
Read the full report from Indrias Getachew here.