Tuesday July 11, 2023
Children drinking their nutritional morning porridge in the IDP camps/File Photo
Lul Abdi Noor, 28, and her two-year-old son in Galkayo, central Somalia, have been recovering their health thanks to a nutritional feeding programme for malnourished mothers and children.
She is registered at Horseed mother and child health centre in Galkayo and receives 15 kilos of porridge and 30 sachets of Plumpy’nut paste every two weeks from Somali Development Vision (SDV, which is running 11 nutritional feeding centres in Galkayo, Galinsoor, Bandiradley, Seddeh-higlo and Dagari.
Her son was treated for measles first and now a few months into the nutrition programme he is improving. Lul was eight months pregnant when she too began receiving nutritional suppements.
“They have been feeding me and my little son for three months. I was pregnant and now I have enough breastmilk for my newborn baby,” she said.
Lul and her family of five people were displaced from Wisil in June 2021, following clashes between government forces and Al-Shabaab militia. They are living currently in Sahan IDP camp in Mudug, where food is short. They lost 15 of their 40 goats to drought and the rest during the chaos and confusion of the conflict in Wisil.
“I was doing well before we were displaced from Wisil. We had milk and food. But when we came to the camp, we couldn’t afford to buy powdered milk and there was no livestock milk, so we became malnourished,” she said.
Her children still do not get enough to eat in the camp despite the nutrition supplements. They sometimes get help from their relatives to get food. Her husband joined the army and has not sent them any money for the past six months.
“I don’t work, I stay at home and take care of this child and their father is not here. When we were displaced from Wisil, that was the last time we saw him. Our relatives send us something at times,” she said.
Another mother, Shukri Ali Abdi, who lives in Bandiradley in Mudug, took her acutely malnourished three-year-old son to one of the centres. Prolonged drought and food shortage have made them vulnerable to malnutrition.
“I felt good about it. My child’s condition is being monitored. His weight is measured and I receive his Plumpy’nut, that’s how he is recovering,” she said.
She is happy he can now play with other children after four months of nutritional feeding. When he began he was too weak even to walk.
Shukri whose husband died three years ago, raises her six children alone. They migrated from the rural area to Bandiradley after losing 150 goats to drought.
Their relatives send them a little money enough to buy one meal a day and also pay their $30 monthly rent. Shukri has no income and no skills to earn a living for her children.
The head of the SDV nutrition programme, Farhiyo Ali Mohamed, said 8,490 malnourished children and women are accessing treatment at the feeding centres. They include 6,000 children under the age of five, and the rest are pregnant or lactating mothers.
Those receiving nutritional treatment were selected because they were malnourished for their age. We focused on children between six months and five years. For the pregnant mother we focused on those four months into their pregnancy up until the end of their breastfeeding period,” she explained.
The programme began in February and is funded by the UN’s World Food Programme for a year.
Most of the children and women are living in camps in poor economic conditions having been displaced by conflict and drought in their home areas.