Walikohi battles hunger and malnutrition for her children

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

"My children are constantly with diarrhea. Helena and her two other sisters have suffered from malnutrition in previous years. When my children suffer, my heart cannot rest. Our health center is not equipped to address these problems with our children”, says Walikohi, 18, a mother of three.

She adds, “But now I know that the center has therapeutic food and they can receive the treatment. I am thankful for the help for my children, I can sleep well now.” Six months old Helena Muatele’s family lives in the city of Mbua Hehongo-Curoca, Cunene Province, in Angola.  She is severely malnourished and her brachial perimeter is 9 cm. Her father Muatele, 21 and mother Walikohi are very young parents struggling for a living. 

The family lives in a wooden stick house which is owned by the Helena’s grandmother, along with 10 family members - two brothers, five uncles and two grandparents. Walikohi stays at home to watch the children while Muatele left looking for a job. He was gone for seven months and was not around when Helena was born. 

The grandmother is casual worker and has a daily income of 150 to 200 Kz (US$0.91-1.21) per day. Helena's is basically fed with millet gruel often only once a day for lack of food. Most of the time, the grandmother has to make porridge for everyone including children.  The water they consume comes from a well that is more than one kilometer away from their house.

World Vision, has distributed ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) packages that will benefit more than 3,600 children affected by malnutrition in El Nino affected areas. Malnutrition characterized by very significant weight loss and is related to many deaths of children under five years.  This situation is already considered to be an urgent health problem especially at the community level.

World Vision works with the National Department of Nutrition of the Ministry of Health and has conducted a nutritional survey in the El Nino affected areas of the country.  The   screening of over 2,000 children under five years in Cunene, Huila, and Benguela showed that 4.7% of the children suffered from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and 11.8% from moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) with 16.5% global acute malnutrition (GAM).

Malnutrition figures have gradually gone up since July last year as the hunger season progressed.