Malnutrition deepens

Malnutrition is making it difficult for Malawi's doctors to successfully treat patients, IRIN has learnt.

The director of one of Malawi's main hospitals told IRIN that many discharged patients are being re-admitted after suffering a relapse, of whatever illness, because they have no food at home.

Meanwhile, desperate Malawians are adding to the country's food shortage woes. Many have resorted to eating green maize in fields, thereby depleting the country's crops before harvest time.

Malawi is among the world's 10 poorest countries, 65 percent of its people live on less than one dollar per day. The shortage of maize has pushed the price up. In August 2001, the price of maize per kg went up 300 percent to Mk17 (around 20 US cents). But informal traders now sell it at between Mk25 and Mk30 (around US 40 cents) per kg, nearly 200 percent up from the official price.

Malawi's Vice President Justin Malewezi warned in Blantyre this week that the food shortage "is likely to remain serious for a long time, because it is most likely that the maize in the field will be used for food earlier than harvest time".

He believes the country's food shortage is unlikely to abate for six months. He told reporters this week, after touring 32 satellite food distribution points throughout the country, that reports from villages in southern Malawi are that most people have resorted to eating green maize in order to stave off hunger.

Crops in Malawi's southern region were devastated by floods last year and many communities are still suffering the after-effects.

Secretary for Agriculture Ellard Malindi said 2.3 million out of 2.9 million farm families now have no food of their own. This has meant that 76 percent of farming families were without food, up from 31 percent during the same period last year.

Primary school attendance has dropped because pupils are going hungry. "Our school takes 900 pupils but only 600 continue to attend classes," James Walala, a primary school teacher at Nyungwi Primary School in Chiradzulu district told IRIN. The situation is much the same in schools in surrounding areas, he said.

Malewezi said feeding programmes need to be introduced at health centres and primary schools to reach vulnerable groups such as children under five-years-old, pupils and pregnant and breast-feeding mothers. "It is important that action be taken now in order to prevent an even worse calamity," he said.

At Queen Elizabeth, Malawi's biggest referral hospital in Blantyre, Director Dr Ibrahim Idana said hospitals usually see malnutrition between November and April, when food stores are depleted before the next harvest. "Malnutrition in Malawi is not new. It's a problem that everyone knows about. If you go to any hospital now, there is an increase in child admissions," he told IRIN. He said the increase in admissions was due to malnutrition.

Idana said often patients relapsed and had to be re-admitted, after being successfully treated for whatever their illness, because "after (they are) discharged, there is no food at home". Said Idana: "If you assess the (underlying) cause of (whatever) the disease, you find that it is malnutrition," he explained.

Although Malawi secured 150,000 mt of maize supply from South Africa in October last year, only 62,000 mt has arrived in the country so far.

Officials say transport logistics are a major stumbling block. Malawi is a landlocked country and relies on its neighbours Zimbabwe and Mozambique for the transportation of its imports. However, the railway route from Mozambique has suffered flood damage.