When Food is Insecure, Fortified Porridge Saves Lives

Food insecurity is at critical levels in Gaza and Sudan. These terrible situations are a grim reminder that, every day, millions of people go to sleep hungry.

A program in Burkina Faso could provide insights into low-cost methods to help developing countries protect citizens from the effects of food insecurity induced by any cause.

The key ingredients in this healthy recipe: community-based volunteers and simple porridge.

Volunteers from rural villages are trained by World Neighbors and its partners in basic health, nutrition and hygiene techniques.  Because families know these volunteers, they trust them.  Volunteers are readily allowed into homes and their advice and recommendations are accepted and followed.

Community volunteers in Burkina Faso villages make regular home visits and determine infant nutritional status based on weight, height, age and brachial perimeter. Infants with severe malnutrition are referred to health centers for appropriate care and further follow up. Volunteers help parents and children get to health care facilities, which can be far from villages. They then work with the facilities on care and follow-up for the mothers and their children.

Volunteers also provide families with children suffering from any degree of malnutrition with rehydration salts, basic hygiene training, vitamins and more.

Critically, volunteers teach parents how to prepare simple, fortified porridge. This meal is inexpensive and so nutritious it can prevent nearly all child nutritional deficiencies. It is an easy way to prevent malnutrition and nurse back to health children who suffer from it.

This article originally appeared on FarmersReviewAfrica.com on March 26, 2024.