HORN OF AFRICA CRISIS:
Drought in the Horn of Africa, coupled with conflict in Somalia, has affected over 13 million people. WFP is implementing food operations in five countries in the region (Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda). This page brings together a range of information on the hunger crisis in the Horn and WFP's emergency response.
Under a new supplementary feeding initiative, WFP now reaches nearly three times more malnourished children in the desolate Karamoja region in north-eastern Uganda.
Every month in 2008, WFP reached nearly 6,000 children brought to health centres by their parents. With community-based supplementary feeding, which started in 2009, WFP now reaches almost 17,000 children at the health centres and through an outreach arrangement.
“WFP is doing more to address acute malnutrition in Karamoja", says WFP Country Director Stanlake Samkange. "We are working with NGOs to send out village health teams to identify moderately malnourished children. The teams then refer affected children to outposts that we set up under trees and other places. There, the children receive food and medical attention while their mothers get health and nutrition education".
Acute malnutrition is a sudden onset condition caused by shocks such as drought or conflict.
Aim of the programme
“Our aim is to reach more malnourished children and to provide more mothers and health workers with health and nutrition information while reducing the distances that the mothers have to walk to access assistance”, says Samkange.
Too often in Karamoja, clinical malnutrition is detected only when mothers take their children for ailments such as malaria and diarrhoea. Malnutrition is frequently diagnosed too late and the children die. Community-based supplementary feeding is therefore important as it helps detect malnutrition in time.
Impact of the programme
The programme has increased the rate of immunisation with the Government accessing large numbers of children who arrive for treatment. In addition, the programme has enabled the formation of women's groups.
“Working with the village health teams, the women play a big role in supporting each other, following up children under treatment and spreading health and nutrition information,” Samkange said.
WFP’s broader response
Karamoja suffers a combination of hardships including droughts, extreme poverty, poor hygiene and limited livelihood opportunities. As a result, there are chronic food shortages and high rates of malnutrition.
Affected children are targeted by WFP’s community-based supplementary feeding programme which is closely supported by the World Health Organization.
During the course of this program, the World Food Program (WFP) has concentrated its efforts in Bhutan on school-feeding, with a focus on increasing school enrollment and attendance in rural areas, particularly for girls, and reducing drop-out rates. Yet, obstacles such as long distances to walk to school (many primary schoolchildren walk up to two hours each way); unaffordable costs of school uniforms; reliance on children for farm labor and household income; lack of interest in education; and the perception that girls’ education is less important than boys’, present challenges to such programs.
Nonetheless, thanks to donors like you, the latest World Food Program assessment has reported that Bhutan is on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of Universal Primary Education by 2015. Since 2005 alone, primary education enrollment rates in Bhutan have increased, and are now at 80% for boys and girls.
Moving forward, the new focus of WFP assistance in Bhutan from 2008-2012 will be on primary education and capacity-building of government counterparts. The Royal Government of Bhutan will be taking on an increased role in the school feeding program as part of a transition phase to full government support.
Please click below to see a photo from Bhutan! Where school feeding programs are offered, enrollment and attendance rates increase significantly, particularly for girls.
