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On April 8, 2010, Mercy-USA for Aid and Development received approximately $300,000 in additional funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide life-saving assistance to malnourished children in Kenya. The added funding increases our USAID Kenya nutrition grant to over $570,000 from August 2009 to March 2011.
Mercy-USA and the Kenyan Ministry of Health (MoH) - with the support of USAID, as well as earlier grants from UNICEF and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) - have set up 27 sites in the Kajiado District of Kenya to treat malnourished children less than five years of age, as well as pregnant women and nursing mothers. Over a 20-month period, Mercy-USA expects to treat and consul approximately 3,600 children and 5,400 women.
This life-saving nutrition program is being implemented in primarily pastoral (livestock herding) communities affected by a prolonged drought. One such community, Mile 46, was visited by Mr. Rashid Khalikov, the Director of UNOCHA New York, on August 16, 2009. This same site was visited by a USAID team on October 8, 2009.
Mile 46 is one of Mercy-USA’s 27 sites. The joint MoH/Mercy-USA nutrition program started in the first week of August 2009. As of April 30, 2010, about 3,620 children under the age of five have been admitted into the selective feeding program, 813 suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and 2,807 with moderate acute malnutrition (MAM). In addition, 299 pregnant women and nursing mothers have been admitted into the program.
The children with SAM are given ready to use therapeutic foods like Plumpy’Nut weekly, while those with MAM are given UNIMIX biweekly. Both are specialized food for malnourished children.
According to a recent UNICEF report, the number of acutely malnourished children under the age of five in Kenya increased by an estimated 168 percent from January to September 2009, with approximately 281,000 children currently classified as acutely malnourished.
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