Feed 30 malnourished young children in Kenyan slum

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.