Of 11,200 children under the age of five who are internally displaced and living in camps in Batticaloa, 30%-40% suffer from malnutrition, a survey by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) revealed.
Based on the survey, UNICEF estimates that 3-5 percent of under-five children suffer from severe acute malnutrition (wasting).
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Jaffna students, though still able to attend schools, are facing food shortages and security concerns due to the continuing economic embargo and violence against civilians. Photo TamilNet |
According to UNICEF Sri Lanka, 175 severely malnourished children are in community-based nutrition rehabilitation programmes.
Accordingly, UNICEF has conducted a series of training programmes among local health personnel and facilitated the implementation of nutrition rehabilitation programmes at community and health facility levels using ready-to-use foods and therapeutic milk.
In addition, high energy biscuits were distributed to under-five children, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
“Last month we conducted a training programme for health personnel from Batticaloa and they are carrying out the distribution process. We have targeted children identified with both mild and severe cases of malnutrition and through this programme we hope to prevent them from deteriorating further,” UNICEF Project Officer for Nutrition Dr. Renuka Jayatissa told the Daily Mirror.
“Once these children have been fed the special foods complete with additional vitamins and minerals their condition will improve to the level of being able to subsist on the normal food being given to other camp inhabitants,” she said.
UNICEF has said there was a shortage of milk foods in hospitals in Batticaloa and expects to remedy the problem through distributions made through health officials who took part in the programme.
“We generally do not promote powdered milk to mothers with infants because the nutritional value of breast milk is higher and when preparing it the milk can get contaminated. So instead we will continue to provide special biscuits for the mothers and milk based nutritional supplements for the children. UNICEF hopes to continue this programme until the end of this year,” Ms. Jayatissa said.
