Cushioning the blow of the lean season
How WFP protects malnourished families in Karamoja
It’s noon on a day in early July and the heat is stifling at the WFP nutrition screening site in Karamoja. It hasn’t rained for over three weeks, and the lean season is in full swing — leaving almost half a million people in the region with little to eat. The harsh sun beats down on the backs of women where their babies sit, waiting to be weighed, measured and categorised as malnourished or not.
Karamoja, in north-east Uganda is characterised by high rates of poverty and under-nutrition that are linked to bad weather, poor environmental conditions and infrastructure. From April to September, while farmers are waiting for their harvest to come, malnutrition rates in the region are at their worst. They have been categorised as ‘serious’ for the past seven years during the lean season.
“The lean season in Karamoja can have a devastating effect on families. Erratic rainfall means food is scarce and families are left no alternative but to rely on WFP for food,” explains Mohamed Satti, Head of WFP’s Karamoja Area Office.
Three months ago, Flavia Achom’s four-year-old daughter Jennifer collapsed in her arms — limp and lifeless.
“She’d had diarrhoea for some weeks and I could see her body was getting weak. I took her to the clinic and we started getting help from WFP,” explains Flavia.
Jennifer is not alone. A third of children in Karamoja under five are suffering from stunted growth due to malnutrition. WFP supports around 35,000 acutely malnourished children every month in Karamoja with nutritious porridge filled with iron and vitamin C, as well as ongoing advice from its partners’ nutritionists.
When food is especially scarce — WFP gives their families an extra ration of food. This year, malnourished families got cereal, beans, vegetable oil, and nutritionally fortified porridge. This extra food protects malnourished children, like Jennifer, from having to share their specialised food with the rest of their family.
Now Jennifer is back to full health and is dancing around the fire with her sister Sylvia, while Flavia cooks for them. The nutritious porridge simmers on top of the glowing charcoal. The very same charcoal which means Flavia can afford to feed her four children. Every day she goes to cut trees to make charcoal to sell — earning her around 6,000 Ugandan Shillings (around US$1.50) a day.
Women in Karamoja, like Flavia typically bear the brunt of the burden when it comes to feeding their families. Her husband pushes wheelbarrows in another district, but keeps all the money he earns for himself.
“This season is hard and the extra food from WFP has helped us a lot. The whole family is now healthy again, me included” says Flavia. “Normally all the money I make goes on food — and I only make enough for us to eat once in a day. These past months we’ve all eaten enough and I have more energy to work.”
Because of the extra food WFP gave their families, the rate at which malnourished children in Karamoja recovered went up from 72 percent to 86 percent over the six-month lean season.
“Time and time again we’ve seen families resort to sharing out the supplementary and therapeutic food we give them.This undermines the child’s ability to recover,” explains Mohamed. “The protective ration can often be the lifeline to a malnourished child, and lift the whole household out of food insecurity.”
WFP’s protective rations this year were made possible by funding from multilateral donors.
