On January 12, 2015 many places in the Southern Region received heavy rains that left such visible marks as swollen rivers and flood plains in otherwise dry places.<\/p>\n
So catastrophic were the effects in 15 districts that property and lives were lost. Farmers bore the brunt, too, as they lost livestock at home and crops in the gardens.<\/p>\n
Following the washing away of food crops in the gardens, many families were left hunger-stricken with little or no food to feed themselves.<\/p>\n
Such a disaster did not spare 28-year-old Malita Nkhwangwa of Ngabu in Chikwawa. The mother of a three-year-old child said the floods washed away all her crops, leaving her helpless, as she failed to harvest anything during the harvest period, and hopeless.<\/p>\n
Malita, who granted the interview in the company of her wasted child while waiting for treatment at Ngabu Rural hospital, said she cannot afford to purchase food on a daily basis; admitting that, in most cases, she feeds her child once a day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have food at home and, sometimes, we have food once a day. Most of the times, we eat nsima [maize meal] without relish. I am only a subsistence farmer but, due to the heavy rains we had early this year, life has become unbearable,\u201d said Malita.<\/p>\n
When I visited Ngabu Rural Hospital, at least ten women were waiting to get their share of Chiponde or Likuni Phala as part of treatment to either acute or chronic malnutrition.<\/p>\n
Community nurse at Ngabu Rural Hospital, Mercy Mpina, said the facility used to receive a lot of patients suffering from malnutrition, but the cases are declining.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks to the supply of Chiponde, which we are giving out to affected children, things have improved greatly. Some children are malnourished due to the effects of HIV from their parents. But this year many cases we received were due to lack of food nutrients in the bodies, which tells you that there is no food in most households, mainly due to floods,\u201d said Mpina.<\/p>\n
In Chikwawa District, some villages have teamed up and formed Gomo Community in the area of Traditional Authority Ngabu. They are building resilience mechanisms by forming community care groups that are disseminating messages on malnutrition.<\/p>\n
Group chairperson, Masautso Tchapo, said they encourage families to include a balanced diet in their meals as one way of providing robust support to children in the first 1,000 days after their birth.<\/p>\n
They are also conversant with the use of the Mid-Upper- Arm-Circumference to detect if a child in the community is suffering from malnutrition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe visit families, teaching them how they can prepare a balanced diet using locally-available food stuffs. We want to achieve a malnutrition-free status at household level. We also encourage women to give birth in hospitals and not traditional birth attendants. Above all we also encourage hygiene and sanitation both at household and village level because we cannot talk of ending malnutrition without tackling these issues,\u201d said Tchapo.<\/p>\n
In Ndungunya Village, Traditional Authority Jenala in Phalombe, villagers have formed field schools where they are cultivating food crops that will supplement their diet, especially when another disaster strikes.<\/p>\n
Resilience Project Coordinator, Pilirani Mangasawu, said the initiative is premised on preparing communities to avoid shocks that affect food security after a disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a number of food stuffs, including pumpkins, that are vital to our bodies. So, the resilience project is really working and farmers will not be caught off guard again,\u201d said Mangasawu, who is working with Adra Malawi in the village.<\/p>\n
Such initiatives are also implemented in Bona Village in Phalombe where a group of women have formed Chisomo Care Group and are drilling fellow women in best cooking techniques.<\/p>\n
The group is working with Chitekesa Health Centre in the district. Senior Health Surveillance assistant at the facility, Mark Makasu, said since the groups were formed early this year there has been a reduction in the number of wasted children seeking treatment.<\/p>\n
The Cost of Hunger Study report released in May 2015 indicated that 23 percent of child deaths in Malawi are associated with under nutrition.<\/p>\n
In fact, the report indicates that, between October 2015 and March 2016, approximately 121,721 under-five children face the risk of both moderate and severe acute malnutrition in the country\u2019s 25 emergency districts.<\/p>\n
To make matters worse, all this is happening amid prospects of the looming hunger in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On January 12, 2015 many places in the Southern Region received heavy rains that left such visible marks as swollen rivers and flood plains in otherwise dry places. So catastrophic were the effects in 15 districts that property and lives were lost. Farmers bore the brunt, too, as they lost livestock at home and crops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16052,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16049\/revisions\/16052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}