Childhood Malnutrition in post-earthquake Haiti

Summary

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.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

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.

How will this project solve this problem?

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

Potential Long Term Impact

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.

Project Message

"This program not only treats malnutrition, but benefits the farmers and employees in Cange who are part of this program - local production creates jobs that would otherwise not be there."
- Erica Phillips, Leland Hunger Fellow, staff at Zanmi Lasante

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).

Resources

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