Silence the hunger

Acutely malnourished, too weak to cry, too tired to play 

In places of hunger around the world, an uneasy silence prevails. It is the silence of children, too weak to speak or cry out. In hospitals in conflict-affected regions they lie down emaciated and wasting away.

In areas gripped by extreme climate events they’ve lost the energy to laugh and play.

Turkana, Kenya, is one of those places. In the vast arid land, drought has pushed three-year-old twins Elemut^* and Akilim^* to acute malnutrition. Without food and adequate nutrition their condition is at risk of turning deadly. 

That was the point   their mum Dorcas^* took drastic action. To save their lives, she moved her family to live closer to a Save the Children outreach clinic. 

See the life-saving work of our outreach nutrition health clinic, made possible by kind supporters.

From malnutrition to good health

In Turkana, the outreach clinic is set up every fortnight to bring healthcare closer to the pastoral communities. Like Dorcas, mothers queue up with their children for medical treatment and health monitoring.

Here Elemut and Akilim were treated for three months as part of an outpatient nutrition outreach program. When they started to recover, they were transferred to a supplementary feeding program for continuous monitoring.

From being acutely malnourished, the children were on the path to better health.

“If I did not move here, my children could have died. They became well from the treatment and the [peanut paste] that they got,” Dorcas shared.

This therapeutic peanut paste is packed with protein, minerals and vitamins in each sachet.

Therapeutic peanut paste is used to help treat malnourished children. Within hours of having peanut paste, a child struggling against this deadly condition can start to feel their energy levels pick up. Over the following days, strength begins to return to wasted muscles. 

Silence born from hunger is broken. Laughter, cries, giggles – the sounds of children – return. 

Save the Children’s health clinics are tangible proof that donor support can help save lives. 

But as hunger continues to bite, global aid cuts  are threatening the medical interventions proven to stop malnutrition. Supplies of therapeutic peanut paste are at risk, and health clinics in remote communities are being forced to shut down.

Photo: Sam Vox / Save the Children.