Nutrition Support for Orphans' Education Center

A better nourished world is a better world, During this quarter, Empowerment For the Poor-Uganda focused on carrying out nutritional assessments for children to ascertain whether children are given the right and timely nutritional care necessary for their good health and proper growth for all stages of their life. A total of 219 children from 83 households were carried through the assessment.

Empowerment For the Poor-Uganda aimed at providing sufficient and precise knowledge to children caretakers on the current nutritional situation of the children and the causes for these situations in order to reduce severe malnutrition conditions among children below 5 years. When assessment exercise was completed decisions to intervene in addressing these severe malnutrition situations were made by recommending to households on the best foods to feed their children. We also used this exercise as an opportunity to carry out community mapping to assess the community and households needs in terms of nutritional needs and suggested recommendations. This exercise was very exciting and helpful because it really helped us to determine the extent of malnutrition among children and the major cause of malnutrition, how many children and families are affected and literacy levels of the caregivers.

We used both direct and indirect methods of nutritional assessment which included; anthropometry where we focused on the physical measurement of the body by measuring the weight, height of children and MUAC (Mid Upper Arm Circumference) basing the age of the child. Here we would examine weight for height by comparing the weight and the height of children, which helped us to determine over and under weight, wasting and stunted children respectively. We also compared weight for age to determine wasting among children, which had been due to poor feeding or illness. When it came to using of a MUAC tape, this has three colors; green which indicates normal nutritional status, yellow, which indicates moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) and red, which indicates severe acute malnutrition (SAM). In using this measurement, children below 12.5cm are all severely malnourished, between 12.5 and 13.5 they are moderately malnourished and above 13.5cm are normal. We combined the anthropometry assessment with several clinical assessments where we assessed the physical being of children using senses. In this we would look at the signs and symptoms that label a disease and here we assessed from the head to toe. From the head; we would look at hair for its color, eyes for color and dryness, mouth; for tongue and teeth and face skin. We also checked the skin all over the body for skin patches, dehydration and wasting. We also examined Edema by examining swelling of the feet, in the legs and body.

Using this assessment therefore, on the 219 children that we assessed, our assessment report indicated 27% to be severely and acutely malnourished, 56% to be moderately malnourished and 17% were normal children. We thank you for your continued generous support that has enabled us to achieve such good results so far and we request for your continued support to enable us transform the lives of those children who are still malnourished. Thank you