Creating a better way to deal with hunger

Creating a better way to deal with hunger

For too many children around the world, hunger is a life-threatening reality. In 2018, nearly 17 million children around the world were severely malnourished.

Over the last decade, the world has made remarkable progress in treating acutely malnourished children: reaching more families in need with care and improving the methods used to help children recover their health.

Still, 3 out of 4 children who suffer from the deadliest form of hunger – severe acute malnutrition – cannot access treatment, leading to a vicious cycle of malnutrition, disease, and poverty.

The good news is: we can change this. Malnutrition is predictable, preventable, and treatable. We have a proven model – already adopted by more than 70 national governments – to reach more children through the Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition approach.

ACF International trains and empowers more community health workers and volunteers to screen and treat moderately and severely malnourished children in the areas where they live and work. They also partner with mothers, fathers, and other caretakers to give them the tools they need to spot the signs of malnutrition early and to screen their children at home.

“At Action Against Hunger, we know what works. What we need now is a dramatic scale-up of these programs to unlock the potential of community-based approaches to treat millions more acutely malnourished children.”

Original source: ACF
Published on 18 September 2019