E-DRUG: Innovative Nutritional Products Needed for Malnourished Children
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Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)
For Immediate Release
MSF WARNS MORE FOOD WILL NOT SAVE MALNOURISHED CHILDREN
Group Calls for Increased and Expanded Use of New, Innovative Nutritional
Products
New York, October 10, 2007. The international medical humanitarian
organization Doctors Without Borders/Meecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today
called for increased and expanded use of nutrient dense ready-to-use food
(RUF) to reduce the five million annual deaths worldwide related to
malnutrition in children under five years of age. Current food aid, which
focuses on fighting hunger -not on treating malnutrition- is not doing
enough to address the needs of young children most at risk, MSF warned.
"It's not only about how much food children get, it's what's in the food
that counts," said Dr. Christophe Fournier, president of MSF's
International Council. "Without the right amounts of vitamins and
essential nutrients in their diet, young kids become vulnerable to disease
that they would normally be able to fight off easily. Calls for increased
food aid ignore the special needs of young children who are at the
greatest risk of dying."
RUFs, which come in individually wrapped rations, contain all the
necessary nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that a young child needs. This
dense therapeutic food, which has milk powder, sugars, and vegetable fats,
can be produced and stored locally and transported easily, and requires no
refrigeration, making it ideal for use in hot climates. It allows a child
to recover from being malnourished and catch up on lost growth. Being
easy-to-use, mothers-not doctors and nurses-are the main caregivers,
meaning far more children at risk can be reached.
"In Somalia we are giving acutely malnourished kids packets of
ready-to-use food and we see them gain weight and begin thriving within a
couple of weeks," said Dr Gustavo Fernandez, MSF head of mission in
Somalia. "RUFs are practical to use in places like Somalia where security
is very bad. General food distribution is also needed, but it is not going
to be very effective to treat kids under three years old."
Severe acute malnutrition in early childhood is common in large areas of
the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and South Asia - the world's "malnutrition
hotspots." The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are
20 million young children suffering from severe acute malnutrition at any
given moment and MSF estimates that only three percent of them will
receive RUF in 2007.
Therapeutic RUF for only severely malnourished children, as current WHO,
World Food Program, and UNICEF guidelines recommend, is too restrictive.
Given its nutritional benefits, RUF has the potential to address
malnutrition at earlier stages and is far more effective than fortified
blended flour, which is normally distributed. MSF is piloting a program
using a modified RUF as a supplement to prevent children from becoming
acutely malnourished.
"Instead of waiting for kids to get gravely ill we decided to act
earlier," said Dr. Susan Shepherd, MSF medical coordinator, Maradi, Niger.
"We are piloting a program that gives RUF to all children under three in
at-risk communities so that they get the nutrients that are missing in
their normal diet."
Through this early treatment or prevention approach in Niger, MSF is
providing mothers with small containers of RUF as a supplement to their
normal diet. Early results from this ongoing project, which is reaching
more than 62,000 children, indicate that RUF is significantly more
effective than the traditional approach of supplying fortified flours and
cooking oil to mothers of young children.
MSF is calling for donors and UN agencies to urgently speed up the
introduction and expansion of RUF. This is going to take a new allocation
of funds to cover the cost of Euro750 million (approximately $1.05
billion) to reach the most vulnerable. But it will also take a realigning
of food aid strategies with existing and newly developed products that
have the nutrition needed to cure malnourished children.
MSF has been treating malnutrition with therapeutic RUF since the first
products became available in the late 1990s, and in 2006 treated more than
150,000 children with acute malnutrition in 22 countries.
Background materials available online.
Food Is Not Enough: Without Essential Nutrients Millions of Children Will
Die
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/news/malnutrition/FoodIsNotEnough.pdf
Treating Malnutrition.
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/malnutrition/index.cfm