We are partnering with World Vision, Canada and funding St Andrews Anglican Rural Hospital in their emergency feeding program to feeding 250 malnourished under fives year olds, in their mother and child Nutritional Rehab unit. The feed-ing program is essential for these children to survive and will include fortified maize flour, likuni phala, iron tablets, and milk.
Due to poor crop harvest and prolonged dry spells in the TA Kapelula and TA Wimbe region of Malawi, 84% of the 36,000 population of area are food insecure. With the expectation that by March 2006, 90% of the population would be without food we decided to support this program over the next 6 months. Believe it or not, 52% of the people living in this area are women and 46.7% are children!
While all families have been suffering greatly, the most seriously disadvantaged have been the under five year olds, 47% suffering the effects of malnutrition. Most of their mothers have other young children with another child expected each year. Many mothers stop breastfeeding the baby/toddler as soon as they are aware another one is on the way, so that these young children suffer the most in the community.
The feeding program is carried out alongside education in family planning, dietary diversification and involves full participation of the community, relevant govern-ment departments such as Ministry of healthy and St Andrews Hospital.
Tobacco farming is the main income generator for this area. In anticipation that income from sales would be used to buy food and meet other needs, farmers have allocated more land to tobacco. The problem for the area has been wors-ened by poor returns from the tobacco crop which has fetched low prices on the market for the past 5 years, also meaning that people cannot afford to buy the foodstuffs for their families as anticipated.
