Bringing nutrition awareness home in Kenya’s famine-scarred Kinango


March 30, 2012

Families in Kenya’s remote Kinango district villages continue to suffer from droughts, crop failures, hunger and chld malnutrition. Photo: Julia Suryantan

Families in Kenya’s remote Kinango district villages continue to suffer from droughts, crop failures, hunger and chld malnutrition. Photo: Julia Suryantan

KINANGO DISTRICT, Kenya — Food security specialists for humanitarian agency Church World Service, just returning from a nutrition program monitoring trip to Kenya’s drought- and famine-stricken Kinango district, say small children suffering malnutrition are now benefiting from a new multi-micronutrient powder (MNPs) supplementation program in the district.  Yet the humanitarian team said building nutrition awareness within families is just as vital to maintain children’s health gains.

CWS East Africa staff member Sammy Mutua said the causes of Kinango’s high malnutrition rates are a tangle of lack of awareness about nutrition, lack of access to health care, insufficient outreach to communities at risk, and, at the root, deep poverty, historically and customarily narrow food sources, climate-challenged droughts and poor harvests.

In Kinango, Mutua and CWS Global Health Nutrition Advisor Julia Suryantan, accompanied by Kenya Ministry of Medical Services Assistant Chief Nutritionist Officer Francis Wambua, first visited a district dispensary where the multi-micronutrient supplements are being distributed. Then, they went with Kinango district nutritionist Mbesa Kimeu to outlying villages to visit mothers and children receiving the MNPs, to assess how the children were faring in their home settings, observe families’ daily food practices, and determine the communities’ greater food and nutrition security needs.

Although child malnutrition is complex, often involving more than iron deficiency anemia, CWS’s Suryantan said, “When children are anemic, with multi-micronutrient supplementation we see changes faster.  Kinango mothers we met with said their children now are having increased appetites and are able to eat more.”

The home supplementation program, using packets of vitamin and mineral-rich powder supplements for malnourished children ages 6 – 24 months, is a collaboration between CWS and the Kenyan government. The micronutrient powders are produced by Heinz ABC in conjunction with the H. J. Heinz Foundation’s global Heinz Micronutrient Campaign.

Beyond supplements, Suryantan said greater family awareness about nutrition is needed, including the value of proper, timely infant and young child feeding practices, such as exclusive breastfeeding in earlier months and dietary diversity in everyday eating.”

Kimeu agrees, saying mothers are eager to continue micronutrient supplement regimens when they see improvements in their children, but says changing longstanding, everyday food customs is more of a hurdle.

Kinango families customarily do not feed small children milk or eggs, even if households have chickens and cows or goats. “They may save the milk and eggs to sell at market,” Kimeu said, but maize is the customary porridge for children, “which is poor in protein and high in carbohydrates.”

She said children often are sent to school in the morning without anything to eat. “They go, waiting for that school lunch.”

Malnutrition shows up for life — and on student test scores

According to both Kimeu and ministry representative Wambua, the nutritional deficits show up in national student test scores, with Kinango ranking significantly lower than other Kenya districts.

It is easy to focus on food production in drought- and famine-struck Kinango, CWS’s Mutua said. “Those of us who work in development tend to think of hunger and food security in terms of ‘more’ – more farming, more crops, eating more. Seeing through the eyes of nutritionists these past two weeks, I’ve gotten a deeper grasp of why it’s not just quantity of food but nutritional mix and quality.

“CWS hopes it can do more in Kinango to work with the government, to help communities with nutrition education, support building health care providers’ capacities, and tackle the underlying causes of hunger and poverty,” he said.

“Once MNP supplementation ends, says Suryantan, “we want to know that families will carry on with good feeding practices, so their children’s health gains will endure, and that their families and communities are building a future with enough water and nutritious food for all.”