News
We team up with the innocent foundation to beat child hunger
14/12/15
Revolutionising the treatment of malnutrition
Today, 17 million children worldwide suffer from life-threatening malnutrition. Shockingly, only 10 per cent of these children currently get the treatment they so desperately need, often because help is too far away.
This is why we’ve teamed up with the Innocent Foundation to revolutionise the way malnourished children are diagnosed and treated, paving the way for health workers to reach all malnourished children, no matter where they live.
Find out more in our video
Revolutionising the fight against life-threatening hunger
By empowering community health workers to diagnose and treat children at home, rather than expecting their parents to walk up to 40km to the nearest clinic every week for treatment, we can meet malnutrition head on, with a better local support network in place for those most in need. We’re testing this idea in Mali and Pakistan, two countries that are heavily burdened with life-threatening malnutrition. By demonstrating what happens if governments change the way they tackle the condition, we believe we can more than double current treatment rates, in a more cost-effective way, and with the same quality of care as that given to children treated at a health facility.
The implications for the fight against child hunger are huge. Kate Franks, innocent foundation manager, said upon her return from visiting the project in Mali : “Everyone I met was enthusiastic and supportive of the project’s aims – from the local community to Ministry of Health personnel and Action Against Hunger staff. There is massive engagement with the project and widespread recognition that it is a potential game changer.”
The innocent foundation's strive for innovation from the project has been welcomed by Saul Guerrero, Director of Operations for Action Against Hunger: "Within minutes of discussing the partnership with the Innocent Foundation, we knew that we had found what we were looking for: a partner that could see where we were heading and what we were trying to achieve. Their support for our innovative programmes in Mali and Pakistan has helped us generate the evidence we needed to challenge the old paradigms and spark an evolution in life-saving treatment."
By proving that we can reach more children more effectively and at the same or lower cost by working through community health workers, we can change the way Ministries of Health all over the world treat life-threatening malnutrition, reaching many more of the 17 million children suffering today.