Nutrition project saves lives
One-year-old Betinha Ronage from the remote village of Tulua in Mozambique’s northern province of Nampula was on the brink of death a few months ago.
Little Betinha was severely malnourished and in desperate of urgent assistance.
She lost her mother two months after her birth and was left in the care of her grandmother, Marieta Chiporo, 65.
Marieta didn’t know how restore little Betinha’s health. “I did not know how to prepare the right meal for her,” she says sadly. “I used to feed her with the same meal that we adults ate.”
As consequence, she says, Betinha grew thin, weak and didn’t want to eat. “I did not know what was wrong with her. For a while I thought she had fever and I feared for her life.”
Doctor Genoveva Madivádua diagnosed Betinha with severe malnutrition. “When I saw her first brought to me by her grandmother, I thought she wouldn’t survive,” the doctor said.
New lease on life
Thankfully, months of nutritional therapy by World Vision have borne fruit. Betinha has recovered and is strong and full of life.
World Vision provided her with clothes, milk, sugar, eggs, vegetable oil, peanuts and other foodstuffs. Most importantly, her grandmother received nutritional education to enable her to keep the little girl healthy.
“Almost every day a Word Vision health assistant was at my home to teach me how to prepare meals for my granddaughter. Betinha started to get better miraculously,” says Marieta, the grandmother.
Betinha is just one of thousands of children who have recovered from malnutrition, thanks to World Vision.
The organisation has trained a number of mothers on nutrition education and equipped them to train fellow mothers on how to prepare nutritious meals for their children.
The women go from house to house and teach others how to prepare nutritional porridge using locally produced foodstuffs. They give special attention to families with malnourished children.
“Those people have almost all foodstuffs lack of knowledge on how to prepare the meals undermines the children’s health,” says António Dias, World Vision’s health, HIV and nutrition coordinator.
He says the organisation is helping the communities to tackle child malnutrition, one of the country's main challenges.