ETHIOPIA: Soaring malnutrition hits children hardest

ROPHI, OROMIYA, 28 May 2008 (IRIN) - We could no longer find enough food and were eating one meal a day," the 35-year-old mother of four from Serraro woreda (district) in West Arsi zone, said on 26 May. "The children became weak [and] I saw my neighbour's child die."

Five months earlier, Genetu had delivered her fourth boy, and she was yet to fully recover from the effects of that pregnancy. "We have been here for two weeks receiving treatment," she told IRIN at the centre. "The one with swollen legs is now much better."

Her children were among a few hundred at the tented centre, located in a remote area about 350 km south of the capital, Addis Ababa. The centre is managed by the medical charities Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Greece and the Missionaries of Charity.

"The problem in the [Serraro] woreda is quite extensive," Sally Stevenson, MSF-Greece country representative said. Her organisation was also conducting outreach programmes to try and stem the problem.

Recently, the charity conducted a rapid weight for height assessment in the area and found severe acute malnutrition prevalence at a dramatic 11.6 percent - nine percent above the threshold of two percent.

"We found very high rates of severe malnutrition here and in response, launched the interventions," she told IRIN, referring to MSF-Greece's feeding centres at Rophi and Senbete, and the outreach programmes. "We have over 600 children in the programmes."

In a catalogue of dozens of nutrition surveys in Ethiopia over the last few years prepared by the Ethiopian Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (DDPC), only one result shows a higher rate of severe acute malnutrition. A rate of 15.4 percent was found among a population at a resettlement site in 2003.

Among normal rural populations, the MSF-Greece figure is the highest since the DPPC catalogue began in 2000.

"There are a range of compounding problems - lack of rain, a fairly food insecure area and increasing prices," Stevenson said. "In the outreach programme, we had over 200 children after only two days."

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