MALNUTRITION: pre-empting the crisis state of severe malnutrition

JOHANNESBURG, 4 June 2010 (IRIN) - Don't wait for severely malnourished children to turn up at therapeutic feeding centres in a developing country, rather prevent this by providing them with nutritious food aid, international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) told donors and governments this week. MSF has launched a campaign called Starved for Attention to reform humanitarian food assistance and nutrition programmes for malnourished children, which will run until World Food Day on 16 October. "We know treatment of malnutrition lies in early treatment, and by providing quality balanced foods we can prevent the tens or hundreds of thousands of children needing care and burdening the already stressed national healthcare systems in many developing countries," said Stéphane Doyon, leader of MSF's nutrition team. Food aid for children largely consists of cereal-based porridges made of corn-soya blend containing no animal-source food and MSF has been lobbying for some years for reforms in international food aid for young children, who are most affected in a food security crisis. Doyon said developing countries such as Mexico had halved the number of malnourished children in the past two decades, using relatively cheap methods like fortifying flour with milk. Community kitchens in Thailand hand out free well-balanced meals that include eggs and milk. If donors could help replicate and support similar programmes in African and other Asian countries, "it would make a huge difference," he said. At any given time an estimated 195 million children worldwide are affected by malnutrition, according to MSF. Malnutrition contributes to at least one-third of the eight million annual deaths of children under five years of age.