Education Kenya Project #21154

Feed 30 malnourished young children in Kenyan slum

by Macheo US

Project Report | Dec 15, 2020
Thomas' Journey

By Seth Mwangi | Macheo Health and Education Project Lead

Thomas

Thank you for all your support and the amazing help you are giving children like Thomas.

From the Kiandutu Slum in Thika, Kenya....

Thomas* experienced a sad start and didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy his early childhood. When he turned 3 months, his parents separated causing his mother to have to struggle raising him all by herself. Life was a real struggle since his mother only depended on casual jobs that were occasional and paid little money to enable her buy food and pay house rent as well. Living in the Kiandutu slums was characterized by a lack of food, poor living conditions and unemployment that sunk them into the cage of poverty.

When Macheo first identified Thomas, he was 16 months old and weighed just 13 pounds. He fell sick so often because his body did not have the same ability to fight off infection as a well-nourished child’s body would do. Thomas was not yet dewormed, he had little appetite, which only intensified his condition and the complications he was experiencing. He was then enrolled in the malnourishment program, which provided Thomas with nutritional supplements and intensive follow-up to help strengthen his diet that contained nutritionally dense foods. He was also dewormed and provided the care and support he needed to grow as a well-adjusted child.

Thomas’ mother was also educated about proper nutrition and feeding practices for children, as well as warning signs of malnutrition from training offered by Macheo before the corona pandemic started. She also became trained on proper parenting, hygiene and cleanliness. To reinforce her ability to provide for her family, Macheo enrolled her into the cash transfer program. Through the support, she has started a grocery stall and can now have a stable income. Thomas is now well adjusted and enjoys a happy childhood.

What Macheo is doing to change the environment that childen like Thomas will experience

Even before COVID-19 became a global pandemic threatening the health and well-being of the world, many children under 5 years of age suffered from wasting putting them at higher risk of death. For children who survive, wasting adversely affects children’s body growth, brain development, and later school performance. Malnourished children are the most at risk during this pandemic. First, they are at risk because of potential disruptions in the nutritional services that keep them alive. Secondly, under nutrition makes them more susceptible to infection. And finally, they are more vulnerable because they rely on parents for daily feeding, care and support. If caregivers are sick, quarantined or unable to secure nutritious and safe food and drinking water, children will suffer.

Macheo has continued to offer nutritional support to children who were identified. Through this intervention;

• We intensified our intervention to protect, promote and support optimal breastfeeding, age-appropriate complementary foods and feeding for infants and young children, and related maternal nutrition, using all opportunities to include key messages on COVID-19 symptoms, hygiene practices, and infection prevention and control measures.

• We took safety precautions of the current nutrition programming to reduce potential of infection in undernourished children, their caretakers and staff by hand washing with soap, physical distancing and intensive messaging. This was so because the government still has restricted gathering of any kind. Macheo was forced to work with these children in their homes.

• We Intensified efforts to strengthen the capacity of mothers and caregivers to detect and monitor their children’s nutritional status using low-literacy/numeracy tools including mid-upper arm circumference.

• We also intensified pre-positioning (cash transfers for vulnerable families) to buy essential commodities like food for the prevention and treatment of children who were malnourished and routine medical checkups and supplies at national, community and health facility levels.

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Aug 17, 2020
Keeping the Children Fed

By Seth Mwangi/Anne Thompson | Service Delivery Manager/President Macheo US

Rachael

Dear Friends,

We all know that malnutrition increases the chances of individuals getting ill, staying ill, and dying. It weakens the immune system, increasing the body’s susceptibility to infections and setting in motion a vicious cycle. And just as those experiencing malnutrition and diet-related diseases face worse symptoms from COVID-19, this cycle of malnutrition, infection and death is exacerbated by the present pandemic.

The pandemic has made families face grave challenges in the forms of food price hikes, unemployment, restricted mobility and disruption to health and social services. Regardless of whether they are directly or indirectly affected by the virus – their nutritional intake, and therefore health, has been harmed and urgent action needs to be taken to address the barriers they face in accessing healthy food.

To facilitate improvement Macheo continues to provide critical community-based nutrition services, using innovative/digital delivery systems for basic services such as promotion of breastfeeding, micronutrient supplementation, and basic primary health care, including immunizations.

Macheo scaled up the cash transfer programs, using nutritional vulnerabilities as beneficiary targeting criteria and provide adequate nutrition, health and hygiene advice using innovative solutions such as digital payments and social media messaging.

In the field....

Success Stories

Rachael is a child of a teen mum. They live in the Kiandutu slum in a rented house with Rachael’s grandmother. When she was referred to our Malnourished Child intervention, she weighed 11 lbs. at eight months old, had delayed milestone, couldn't play and had a very poor appetite. She had other health conditions which were affecting her food intakes. She was taken to a doctor where she was diagnosed with intestinal challenges which was preventing her food intakes. She continued staying in our program for two weeks and in March the government announced a curfew as a control measure to prevent the spreading of Covid 19. That meant that Racheal and other children in our intervention could not come to the center to receive the food rations that had been set for her.

We came up with the plan of helping Racheal from home. We engaged her mother through regular phone calls for checkups and follow ups. Her mother was taught how to care for her child, prepare a healthy diet for her as well as how to stimulate her baby. She was also put in a cash transfer program where she could buy food and meet other essential needs like house rent. With our support Rachael now looks happy, improved in her health and has started walking.

These successes would not possibe without the help and trust that you have given to us, in order to help the neglected children of this world.

Thank you and please stay safe in these challenging times.

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Apr 21, 2020
Finding ways to continue nutritional support

By Seth Mwangi/Anne Thompson | Service Delivery Manager/President Macheo US

Food Delivery

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will have lasting effects on people and their nutrition, healthcare, economies and food systems in all corners of the world. Likewise, many of our interventions including the Macheo Malnourished Program have been disrupted or suspended. One of the intervention that has been fully affected is the malnourished child intervention. The government banned social gathering and restricting social distancing forced us to close our outreach center.

Ester was a malnourished child identified in our outreach center in Kiandutu. She was malnourished and had contracted bronchitis when she was admitted in our program in January. She was also diagnosed with some serious motor development deficiencies. At our center, our staff immediately took her to hospital for diagnosis and she was given drugs. She was also put on our dietary treatment that she needed. During her stay, she had started to make steady gains in both her overall health and motor development. When the government banned social gathering, we were forced to tell the parents to stop bringing their children. We were had to come up with ways of supporting the parents at home so that they could continue giving care to their children.

Our intervention initially started with a food supply to the clients, as seen in the photo, but as the government become stricter, we focused on cash transfer. This is to help the clients buy food or any necessity that the vulnerable families require.

Our response

We have already taken the following actions to respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

We have restricted all travel to protect our staff and the clients.
We are sharing essential information on infection prevention and control with our clients through telephone calls, ensuring that our clients and staff are practicing social distancing, and where indicated, working from home.
Regular calls to clients to ensure that they are coping with the pandemic and it's restrictions.

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