MaximsNewsNetwork: 11 November 2009 - UNICEF: According to a new UNICEF report, the number of malnourished people worldwide has surpassed one billion and is a factor in one third of all under five deaths. UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman visits Mali, where one in five children do not survive to see their fifth birthday.
Mali, a country bisected by the vast and ever-growing Sahara desert would seem a likely candidate for food shortages and starvation, yet the streets of Bamako, the capital, are chock-full-of-fruit and vegetable stalls and animal markets.
Still, malnutrition rates have reached unacceptable levels. A combination of soaring food prices and high levels of poverty mean that although food is plenty, it doesnt always reach those in need.
This, coupled with low levels of breast-feeding in infants, extremely low use of primary health care services and cultural confusion, has led to emergency level malnutrition rates in the country.
Health Centre 1 in Bamako receives referrals from the surrounding districts; its malnutrition ward is full.
SOUNDBITE (French) Dr. Habibata Traoré, pediatric doctor:
We get children in different conditions, some cant eat, some are hyper sensitive, some are not cognitive and need to be put on feeding tubes.
One-year-old Abdoulaye was one of those cases, he refused to breastfeed and then began to suffer from diarrhea. But it was only when he grew too weak to sit and too weak to lift his head, that his mother brought him in, three months after his diarrhea had begun.
After weeks of intense treatment with drips and then therapeutic milk, he is much healthier and much stronger.
SOUNDBITE (Bambara) Roccaya Diarra, Mother:
He is much better now, when he arrived he couldnt sit up and his head rolled, but now he can sit up and stay like that, hes taking food as well, he drinks all his therapeutic milk and look forward to meal times.
According to a new UNICEF report, malnutrition worldwide has topped one billion and is a factor in one third of all under five deaths. In a bid to draw attention to the crisis, not only in Mali, but around the globe, UNICEF executive director, miss Anne Veneman, visited the country.
After meetings with president Amadou Toumani Touré and ministers, miss Veneman visited the district 1 clinic. Here she spoke to doctors and nurses about their work and about malnutrition. She met with mothers who receive supplementary therapeutic food from the clinic, and with mothers, like Rocacaya Diarra, whose children have been admitted.
SOUNDBITE (English) Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director, UNICEF:
Well Mali does have a significant problem with under nutrition, both in under five under weight children which averages over 30 percent as does stunting, so its centres like this that help the children recover from malnutrition and its thanks to the mothers who bring their children to these centres so they can get the help that they really have to have in order to survive and have a healthy life time.
While food supply in Mali is secure for the moment with high agricultural production expected between now and March 2010, climate change and desertification threaten Malis farmers.
Veneman traveled North to Timbuktu, on the edge of the Sahara desert, where womens agricultural groups, through the use of canals, wells and careful planning, keep the encroaching desert at bay.
The women here not only grow rice, squash, maize, grain and onions, but also plant trees to shade vegetables, secure shifting sands and prevent soil erosion. Miss Veneman planted her own tree, one of many that will, in time, form a barrier against the planets biggest desert.
As the world continues to debate the global economy, rising food prices and climate change, victims of these debates, children in countries like Mali, continue to starve.
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Breastfeeding. Naturally. Chapter 6: For Partners, Family and Supportersby breastfeedingnz280,477 views
isn't this caused from Malaria?
Ldb29corn 1 year ago
how come the mother of that little boy looks so well fed??? Something is not right there....
maureen1002 2 years ago