Anita recovers her health and helps her mother in house works.

By Jean-Baptiste Mirindi, Senior Officer SBCC&MEDIA

Smiling, Anita, 6 years old, is a little girl who suffered from malnutrition at the age of 3. At the age of one and a half, her mother, with another 6-month-old baby, began to observe a negative change in her health.

At the beginning, his parents thought that it was poison that the child had consumed because his health had become precarious. His mother, Elysée Chito, confirms that her child had been suffering for more than a year before she discovered that it was malnutrition after examinations at Kasheke hospital in Kalehe.

''Anita started to continue the treatments at the health center in Tchofi, but without much success. She was able to complete a medical treatment of plumpy nut but after one or two months she relapsed and we returned to the health center to start the medical cure again," her mother explained.

The first day that Anita was announced as a malnourished child, her two older sisters were left in anguish. Her weak condition caused her to spend the whole day crying and being hated by the other children in the village. She could not eat any kind of food. She only felt comfortable eating meat.

Anita is the third child of her family born with 2 kilograms and that made her parents suffer. She had eaten the food before six months of breastfeeding. "I was about to lose my child because of my ignorance about family planning," says her mother.

According to her mother, Anita's life was saved when mother leaders accompanied by World Vision through the Food Security Project funded by USAID began circulating in villages to encourage households to set up permagardens and raise rabbits to eat the four-star food. The diversification of foods in the family has reinforced the positive change in her health.

Currently, Anita has recovered her health and is already attending elementary school for this school year 2022-2023. "It was Anita herself who requested that she be enrolled in school and I am very happy," says her mother.

Anita has the courage to go to school, but she still has the habit of conditioning her mother to motivate her with a little cocktail because it seems that she can't stand starvation. She is always happy to take a small can to get water from water point near their home after school. She has found her smile again and is happy to walk with her friends every morning on the way to school.