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UNICEF sets up feeding centres to combat malnutrition in Ethiopia

© UNICEF Ethiopia/2003

Student nurse, Yeshihareg Yoseph, hugs Sambato, 7, who is recovering from severe malnutrition in the UNICEF-supported Tulla therapeutic feeding centre. Sambato is one of an estimated 60,000 severely malnourished children in Ethiopia.

Belaynnu Bassa, a 16-year-old mother from Ethiopia's Southern National and Nationalities People's Region (SNNPR) nearly lost her nine-month-old baby, Asefa to hunger and disease because she was too malnourished herself to produce sufficient breast milk.

Bassa was able to save her child by taking her to the Derara Therapeutic Feeding Centre, an emergency programme set up by Save the Children that helps nurse severely malnourished children back to health.

There, every child who weighs less than 70 per cent of their body weight is admitted for therapeutic feeding. With enriched milk provided by UNICEF, the centre will be able to provide Bassa's child with 21 days of treatment to help the baby recover. It will also make sure that when she returns home, she can get additional high-energy food at a supplementary feeding site, to ensure that the baby will not fall ill again.

Such centres are of critical importance for child survival at this time. Ethiopia's recurrent drought, deepening rural poverty and ongoing structural problems have left 15 million people affected and nearly 50 per cent under-nourished.

Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world. It ranked 169 out of 173 countries in the 2003 United Nations Development Programme's Human Development report. Some 85 per cent of the population are rural and depend on small-scale farming. Recent droughts and a decrease in the amount of arable land, coupled with a population that has continued to grow and worsening poverty have resulted in chronic food shortages and increasing destitution. UNICEF estimates that across the country some 450,000 children under five years of age are suffering from acute malnutrition.

To tackle this alarming situation, UNICEF in collaboration with various non-governmental organizations and the country's regional Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Bureaus, supports 53 therapeutic feeding centres and is planning to start supporting many more. 

© UNICEF Ethiopia/2003

GOAL staff mix oil with UNIMIX for the 150-plus beneficiaries at this site. The ration is for the malnourished children. UNICEF hopes to reach at least 145,000 women and children through supplementary feeding sites.

It is also setting up supporting supplementary feeding sites where children and breastfeeding and pregnant mothers receive extra high-energy food to prevent them from becoming further malnourished. Thus far, it has procured and distributed 1,000 metric tons of famix, a blended combination used for supplementary feeding. An additional 4,000 metric tons of UNIMIX, another mineral and vitamin enriched food mixture, is currently on its way from the port in Djibouti to treat 145,000 pregnant women and children.

In addition, UNICEF sent world-renowned nutritionists, Professor Mike Golden and Dr. Yvonne Grellety, as consultants to the country to help develop a treatment regimen that is now being implemented in the feeding centres.

"Effectively you give them a very special diet, a therapeutic diet, all the medicines you need for good nutrition are already put into the diet," explained Golden.

As a result of their work, and training more than 700 health workers in diagnosing and treating acute malnutrition, mortality rates have dropped from as high as 50 per cent to less than three per cent at some centres.

UNICEF has also provided two-day intensive training programmes for some 200 Ethiopian nursing students who have been deployed for the next three months to therapeutic centres in SNNPR, one of the most affected regions of the country.