Rural people act to reduce child malnutrition

Dhaupadi village in Nawalparais district is so remote that many Nepalese people have no idea that it lies 280 km southwest of the capital, Kathmandu. But it is here that a remarkable experiment in self-sufficiency has shown how local people can reduce child malnutrition rates. According to government figures, around 51 percent of Nepalese children under five suffer from stunting - a sign of early chronic malnutrition. The main causes are low food intake, inadequate access to health services and unsanitary conditions. But nutrition experts working with the government and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) believe that child malnutrition can be reduced even in the poorest parts of the Himalayan kingdom. “Village communities can be mobilised through education and awareness and empowered to take action to improve child nutrition by tackling the causes,” said Pragya Mathema, UNICEF’s nutrition officer in Kathmandu. It was this ethos that spurned the Ministry of Local Development with support from UNICEF in 1999 to implement a campaign in 15 districts around the country, helping to reduce malnutrition rates from 40 to 17 percent in the pilot areas. “We know now why our children suffer from malnutrition,” said Karuna Acharya, a young mother from Dhaubadi who has benefitted from the programme and now knows about the symptoms of malnutrition as well as healthy feeding and improved sanitation. Acharya, along with thousands of young mothers like her in the 15 districts, has formed a group to educate pregnant women and new mothers about the importance of child nutrition. “The women now sit together, identify problems and find ways to solve nutritional problems,” explained community mobiliser Yam Kumari Rana in Dhaubadi. She added that the mothers were so aware of the issues now that they queue up every month at the local health monitoring centre to check that their children are gaining weight. “The result of such a community level initiative has been so successful in combating malnutrition,” said UNICEF’s Pradeep Shrestha in Nawalparasi district, where the project has helped to reduce malnutrition from 38 percent in 2002 to 16 percent by January 2006 in under fives. Health workers would like the successful child malnutrition project to be extended to the rest of rural Nepal. “The only way for Nepal to swiftly reduce child malnutrition rates is by empowering the community and mobilising them to get serious about nutrition,” explained Rajendra Devkota, secretary of the Nawalparasi District Development Committee, a local government body. “There is a need to replicate such an initiative in the rest of the country by both the aid agencies and central government,” he added.