Measuring Namphone – A picture of health
Two-year-old Namphon is pulled from the floor and stood in front of a man with a green measuring tape. She eyes the man – a community health volunteer – with suspicion, as he wraps the measuring tape around the girl’s arm.
A group of other children surround the child and her mother. They too are going to be measured. The goal is to find out if these children are malnourished, to see if they are growing healthily.
This is a regular health check for children in this remote Lao village where World Vision is working.
Child nutrition continues to be a concern in rural area of Laos where there is less development. As many as 40 per cent of Lao children were reported as malnourished in a 2006 United Nations Development Programme report. The report further states that when children do not have a nutritious diet and are malnourished, children’s cognitive abilities are delayed and their school enrolment drops.
Often, in isolated villages like Namphon’s, families survive on a subsistence diet of rice grown in small plots of land near their home and whatever vegetable they can forage from the forest.
In Namphon’s community, World Vision is addressing child malnutrition and helping people have a balanced diet by setting up gardens and banana plantations and providing clean water with a new water pump. Chickens and pigs have been donated too, and people are taught to keep their animals healthy through veterinary skills training.
In this village, 205 people from 37 households are benefiting. Nearly half of those people, 98 of them, are children – 56 who are enrolled in the sponsorship programme.
Since the nutritious food programme was implemented in 2012, children under the age of five have been a focus area of the work. Each family with a child below the age of five (25 children in total) receives cans of powdered vitamins that they can mix in with their daily rice. Families have also received training on importance of a varied diet.
As the measuring tape is pulled off Namphon’s arm, the village health volunteer shows the child’s mother. It’s green – meaning Namphon is healthy.
“Since my daughter received nutritious food from World Vision Lao PDR, she has better health, is eating more food and living without sickness,” says Phout, Namphon’s father.
The success is repeated all around, green measurements on every child.
“Every child under five is now healthy,” says Vanhpheng Northachanh, a World Vision Lao transformational development assistant in health.
Mr. Phout’s family is one family who has participated in this program, Mr. Phout 33 years old marry to Ms Na 21 years old, they have one daughter her name is Namphon 2 years old and now a day she is participating in nutrition food activity and she has been regular monitor
Nutrition food still be need in rural area of Laos where less development. Even thought, there are some kind of nutrition food in their area but many time people don’t know it can be nutrition food for them.
Laos is also fact with this problem since long time ago and it is still remain in some district. In a corner of Khammoun Province, Nataphoy village is one of World Vision Lao PDR target area, that are 37 families and 37 household and there are 205 people including 98 female and 56 RCs.
Nutrition food program has been implemented in this village since the beginning of this fiscal year of 2012 and this program has focus on children especially is children who is under five. Nataphoy village; there are 25 under five children and now those children are receiving nutrition food which supported by World Vision Lao PDR.