Grappling with Malnutrition

Based on raised prevalence of acute malnutrition among children under five and the presence of aggravating factors such as poor food security in the general population and raised mortality (severity of a crisis), RDP in collaboration with WFP, has been delivering nutritional supplements to hundreds of thousands of children under five scattered across 4 governorates.

In Wusab As Safil, Dhamar, Azouz, a child aged 12 months, was struggling with acute malnutrition due to the severity of food insecurity situation in the area. Azouz and his five siblings are affiliated to a poverty-stricken family, where parents have no source of income but still fight to put food on the table. With the passage of days, the child’s health condition began to deteriorate to reach at a point where his body became weaker and slimmer, indicating a great deal of malnutrition.

RDP’s community nutrition volunteers, who are working in that area, were doing door-to-door MUAC screening for all children under five for the purpose of either referring them to the nearest health facilities for SAM or MAM treatment or to provide them with preventive nutritional supplements under the blanket supplementary feeding program, RDP supporting in the district.

Unfortunately, Azouz MUAC screening showed 12.5, where he was directly referred to the area health center for MAM treatment to be discharged after 3 weeks with full recovery of malnutrition with great effort of the CNVs for their constant follow-ups and awareness-raising sessions on key health and nutrition messages for the whole family. In late December 2020, Azouz had been enrolled to the blanket supplementary feeding program to prevent him from further deterioration of malnutrition and to protect his well-being. Indeed, the BSFP program has saved hundreds of thousands of children from falling even deeper into acute malnutrition and decreased the total rate of malnourished children in Yemen.