Malnutrition contributes to more than half of all child deaths in Ethiopia. A recent survey showed that 47 percent of Ethiopia's children are stunted and 11 percent suffer from severe wasting.
It's not all bad news though. Recovery rates for these severely under-nourished children can be as high as 90 to 95 percent when an innovative, ready-to-eat therapeutic food spread is used. The spread can literally bring children back from the brink of death in a matter of days.
It needs no cooking, so it can be eaten anywhere and at any time, simply by squeezing it out of a tube.
Though the spread is inexpensive, UNICEF found that it cost too much to import it into Ethiopia and that limited capacity at overseas plants was making it difficult to make life-saving deliveries on time.
So they built a factory. Now they can produce the spread in country; saving money, ensuring faster deliveries and providing a higher level of self-suffiency to a country racked by drought and child malnutrition.
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For example, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, UNICEF runs the largest factory in Africa that produces a therapeutic food spread for malnourished children, and it is a step in the right direction in addressing the issue of malnutrition at the local level. The spread is a high-protein, high-energy peanut-based paste used for the treatment of severely malnourished children.
The situation in Ethiopia is dire. Malnutrition contributes to more than half of all child deaths in Ethiopia. And a recent demographic and health survey shows that 47 percent of Ethiopia's children are stunted, 38 percent are underweight and 11 percent suffer from severe wasting.
While UNICEF could've easily imported the spread from plants overseas, they instead chose to work with donors and manufacturers to manufacture the spread in Ethiopia. Thus they reduce the transportation costs, ensure timely deliveries and provide a higher level of self-suffiency to a country racked by drought and child malnutrition.
[Your comments]
This is the kind of innovation needed in humanitarian assistance, and I support the work of UNICEF wholeheartedly in this endeavor. More efforts like this are needed so that the cycles of poverty and malnutrition can be broken.
