Nutrition program successes

7/25/2019

The nutrition program at Mercy Hospital reported two examples of the success stories and impacts of their recent outreach visits. Mohamed Alie Khadar heads up the outreach team as coordinator. The team visited communities around Bo in the course of providing charity clinical services, and enrolls children as in need of nutritional support into a special child nutrition program to bring their weight and development to an age appropriate level.

One child, Mohamed Kanneh, who is a year old, was very lean for his age and the team diagnosed him as malnourished. The team conducted a screening, using measurements and scales and found that Mohamed fulfilled all the criteria for the nutrition program. His family was given a supply of Pikin Mix, a nutritious food supplement that can be easily prepared similarly to oatmeal using readily available resources in the rural environment.
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Gracious Bangalie, 15 months old, was also found to be malnourished on a subsequent outreach visit. She was routinely screened as all children under 5 years of age are during outreach and Gracious’ family was consequently referred to the nutrition program for evaluation and enrollment. Like Mohamed had been before her, Gracious was enrolled in the program, and her family was given a supply of nutritional supplements to prepare for her.

The nutrition program is provided free of charge to children enrolled during outreach in rural villages and in clinics conducted at the hospital in Bo. While the program is intended for mild to moderate undernourished children not served by government programs, the clinical outreach team has found the program really helped to reduce the observable malnutrition rate of children in the various rural communities Mercy serves. On occasion, the team runs across a child whose malnutrition is very severe – too undernourished for the program intervention. When that happens, the child is transported to Mercy Hospital for urgent care to address a crisis of life-threatening starvation. That child is then referred for enrollment in the outreach program until they reach age body weight and begin to exhibit achievement of appropriate growth rates and development measures.

At the visit where Gracious was enrolled, Mohamed was seen to have made significant progress. With the help of the program, Mohamed has been shown to be gradually gaining weight, and his family reports he is eating well. Seeing their child’s progress, the family thanked Mercy for undertaking such a strong initiative and helping malnourished children like Mohamed had been at his enrollment. They expressed hope the program can be extended to other villages where they know there are children in need. 

Gracious’ mother expressed her thanks and appreciation for the food supply given as the outreach team advised her, “it is nutritious and supports the healthy development of your child.” Parents are provided instructions on use of the supplement, and advised of best practices to treat their child’s malnourishment. The child is again weighed and measured to assess growth at each subsequent visit to their village. Gracious and Mohamed will be monitored continuously and continue to be provided food supplements, until they measure adequate growth to graduate from the program.