A local recipe to fight malnutrition

The 4* meal in South Kivu

Francine Aksanti, 21 years old, is well hearing. In the middle of a group of women, she is following, in a relaxed athmosphere, a cooking demonstration on “four star meal” at the Bitobolo II health centre, south west of the city of Bunyakiri in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The diagnosis is in: severe acute malnutrition

Mother of twins (Songa and Muganza), Francine doesn’t understand why her babies have been constantly losing weight over the last six months. “We eat cassava leaves with fufu (a dough prepared from corn and / or cassava flour) every day but the children continue to lose weight”, she said in calm voice with a trace of disappointment.

Worried, the young mother takes her twins to the Bitobolo II health centre. The medical diagnosis showed that the children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. They are admitted to the outpatient therapeutic nutrition unit and receive nutritional supplement foods: Plumpy Nut. After four weeks, Songa and Muganza are gradually putting on weight. Their mother continues to take them every week to the preschool surgery so that she can better monitor their growth.

Local products for the four stars

It’s here that she discovered, along with other nursing mothers, how to make “four star meal”: a dish made with local products and recipes to feed children without having to spend a lot of money.

“It’s a combination of different types of food which is meant to bring the micronutrients necessary for a child’s proper development. The first star is cereals such as boiled sorghum flour to which peanut paste is added as the second star. The third star is bananas and finally eggs yolks as the fourth. All these ingredients are affordable for almost everyone here” explained Dr Emery Lukaka, nutritionist from Médecins d’Afrique, NGO partner of UNICEF in the implementation of nutrition activities in Bunyakiri.

Malnutrition of many causes

Like Francine, most families in Bunyakiri produce their own food. But ignorance of good culinary practices, the weight of tradition, the multiple displacements of the population associated with the low purchasing power of households mean that the diet of these families is little or not diversified.
Adults and young children are subjected to the same diet which often monotonous and poor quality, leading to the children becoming malnourished. This low diet also reduces parents’ ability to fight childhood diseases.

United in the fight against malnutrition in South Kivu

In the Bunyakiri health zone, North West of the South Kivu province, seven in every 10 children suffer from chronic malnutrition and half of all children in this zone suffer from acute malnutrition.

To break the intergenerational cycle of chronic malnutrition in this health zone, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Word Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have set up in 2015, with the financial support of the Switzerland, an integrated project to fight malnutrition.

As well as curative management of acute malnutrition (severe and moderate), the project also attacks the underlying causes of the disease by regalvanising agricultural production and improving the supply of water and health and sanitation conditions.

Through farming groups, the FAO supports agricultural production by distributing enhanced seeds to the local farming community. The WFP, on the other hand, provides input for managing moderate acute malnutrition. UNICEF, through its partnerships, is building centres for collecting and distributing water in the city. The improved latrines and the collection points for household waste are also being set up to improve health and to prevent waterborne diseases.

“This project is lifesaving for the population of Bunyakiri. You can really see the results! We have running drinking water in the city, malnourished children are regaining their strength, pregnant women are well looked after and give birth to children of healthy weights. I hope for its expansion into other areas of health” said Jean Mwanuka Bihoo, head of the administrative post in the Bunyakiri health zone.

Translated from French by Emily Scott