Making sure children receive enough of the right foods in Malawi

Malnutrition costs lives. Each year, 11 million children under the age of five in the developing world will die. Around 40 per cent of these deaths are partly caused by malnutrition.

A malnourished child is more vulnerable to disease such as AIDS-related illness and less able to withstand, for example, a bout of severe diarrhoea. A malnourished child may also not grow enough and their healthy physical development can be jeopardised. And too often still, a child will die because he or she simply has not received enough nutritious food.

Malawi has very high levels of malnutrition with chronic malnutrition levels as high as 48 per cent among children under five. The most common deficiencies include iodine, iron and vitamin A. Shockingly, something as easily preventable as malnutrition is among the ten leading causes of death in Malawi’s hospitals.

Soccer Aid 2006 funds have supported:

• The treatment of 8,000 severely malnourished under-fives through 42 Community-based Therapeutic Care (CTC) health facilities and nine Nutrition Rehabilitation Units (NRU).
• The provision of therapeutic milk to a further 17,818 severely malnourished children in 95 Nutrition Rehabilitation Units. A child with severe malnutrition usually spends 20 to 30 days in an NRU.
• The provision of nutrition education for more than 100,000 carers focusing on key areas such as: exclusive breastfeeding, adequate complementary feeding, feeding a sick child, control of vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
• The training of 53 staff and 75 volunteers in the Chikwawa district to identify and refer more severely malnourished children to the rehabilitation units.
  
• District outreach teams which train community leaders, drama groups, dancers, religious leaders and traditional healers to educate communities about malnutrition.
• The treatment of over 100 HIV-positive malnourished children in a community-based therapeutic care centre.
• A national Child Health day in July 2007 which enabled two million children under five to receive vitamin A and de-worming tablets. In addition, three million bednets were re-treated with insecticide, and hygiene education demonstrations were carried out.
• The procurement of eight motorcycles to enable care workers to monitor nutrition and HIV projects.

With your help we can reach more children at risk of malnutrition in Malawi.

Read Hardwick’s story

Watch a film of UNICEF Ambassador Ewan McGregor talking about the food shortages in Malawi and how these affect children.

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