‘Children in Sindh particularly vulnerable to malnutrition’: Unicef

Even before the floods, about a third of Pakistan’s children were born with low birth weight.

KARACHI: The number of children suffering from malnutrition in Sindh is higher than the national average, it was revealed on Friday in a United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) press release.

Even before the floods that recently affected more than 20 million people in Pakistan — including 2.8 million children under the age of five years — about a third of Pakistan’s children were being born with low birth weight.

However, while the natural disaster has made the situation much worse, it has also brought many underlying problems, including malnutrition, to surface, Unicef stated, adding that the challenge now is not just to scale up the nutrition interventions but also to establish them for the first time in some areas.

Children in Sindh, for example, are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition, the press release stated. To combat the problems of malnutrition and stunting, Unicef and its partners send “mobile therapeutic feeding units” to communities that have no access to fixed health-care centres. The weight, height and mid-upper arm circumference (a key indicator of growth and development) of children are measured at these units, that have been deployed in such communities by Unicef under its outpatient therapeutic feeding programme. However, while the vast majority of children in such communities can be effectively treated at these mobile units, severe cases need to be treated at a stabilisation centre.

With the support of Engro Chemicals, Unicef established its first stabilisation centre in a civil hospital in Thatta to treat malnourished children with serious medical complications.

With beds for six children and their caregivers, the centre receives nutrition supplies and medicines from Unicef while the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) trains staff at the facility.

Two-year-old Hameed was recently admitted to the centre in Thatta with complaints of high fever and diarrhoea.

“We had no idea what was wrong with him. The village doctor gave him drips, which caused swelling all over his body,” said Hameed’s grandmother. However, the two-year-old boy’s condition is beginning to show a marked improvement as a result of therapeutic feeding and medical treatment.

Five children apart from Hameed are currently being treated at the centre. They are suffering from a range of complications, including respiratory illnesses and severe dermatitis.

“At the moment, we have six children admitted here. We have treated 51 patients in two months,” said Shagufta Samoo, a staff nurse at the centre, adding, “We have had to refer children to other hospitals because we had no space.”

Thatta’s deputy district health officer, Dr Khaled Nawaz, said that more needs to be done to improve the nutritional status of children — especially girls — as well as women.

“In our society, men are given a higher priority than women, so we see more malnourished girls than boys,” he said, adding, “More health education sessions are needed as mothers are also malnourished, and we should provide nutrition support at schools.”

Meanwhile, local women working under the government’s Lady Health Worker programme educate pregnant women and mothers on maternal and child health and nutrition. Unicef provided extensive support to this program.

“We are telling lactating mothers that they must breastfeed their babies for six months, giving them nothing else, after which semi-solid and solid food should be given,” said health worker Maqbool Ahmed.

While Unicef continues to work closely with government, non-government and community-based organisations to deliver life-saving nutrition supplies to children affected in the floods, it remains seriously underfunded, the press release stated. After more than three months, only about half of the organisation’s appeal for $251 million for flood relief work in Pakistan has been received.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 29^th, 2010.