Zanmi Lasante/PIH fights childhood malnutrition by producing Ready To Use Therapeutic Foods, enrolling kids in a food supplement program, and providing nutritious school lunches.
A Haitian proverb spotlights the connections between disease and hunger, medicine and food: "Giving drugs without food is like washing your hands and drying them in the dirt." Prior to the January 2010 earthquakes in Haiti, almost 25% of the children in Haiti faced chronic hunger. With rising prices, the onset of the rainy season, the May-July seasonal hunger gap, and protracted displacement, most expect pediatric malnutrition rates to rise in Haiti.
Treat severely malnourished children with Nourimanba (peanut-butter based Ready to Use Theraputic Food); provide moderately malnourished children with Nourimil (cereal-legume blend); support local production; provide a daily warm lunch to schoolkids
In 2009 approximately 5,600 children received the RUTF/supplements and 9,000 students received school lunches; across all our points of care PIH/ZL expects these numbers to increase to 8,000 and 11,000 over the next year due to the earthquake.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
