Child malnutrition on the rise

Malnutrition among children under-five in Kenya is increasing at an alarming rate and food stocks are rapidly dwindling, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Monday. In a news release, WFP’s Kenya Country Director Holdbrook Arthur said reports of increasing malnutrition rates were coming at a time when the UN food agency had been forced to cut rations across Kenya, as funds and food were at “critically low levels”. “General food distributions and supplementary distributions go hand in hand,” he said. “If you don’t get enough of one, you will end up taking large chunks out of the other just to keep food on the table.” An assessment carried out by the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, in Kenya’s worst drought-hit areas of Turkana, Marsabit, Wajir, Mandera and Garissa revealed that 25 to 30 percent of children there were suffering from malnutrition. “This is two to three times the average rate of malnutrition compared to other developing countries,” WFP pointed out. In this day and age, Arthur stated, there was no reason for a child to be chronically hungry. “We urgently need the special types of food for children before malnutrition rates get any worse,” he said. The news release stated that the funding situation for Kenya was so desperate that WFP had been forced to reduce its general food rations (maize, oil and pulses) this month from 100 to 70 percent. It is relying on the Kenyan government to supplement food needs, and has had to borrow from a UN emergency fund for September. “Even with these measures we can only guarantee food until the end of September,” Arthur warned. “After that, there’s no more food in the pipeline.”