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Reducing malnutrition in Jumla
Date	02-06-2009
Focus Area	Poverty Reduction
Program	Localization of MDGs


	Laxmi with her three year old son

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Target: Halve between 1990 and 2015, the
proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Indicator: Proportion of children under age five
who are underweight

The health post in ward number 1,Talichaur in Chandanath village of Jumla district is vibrant with laughter,mixed with cries of children. The mothers are busy putting tags around
the neck of their babies. Today is the day to weigh their children, the first step to fight malnutrition!

This health post cum birthing centre provides medical services to people from three villages. One of the children in the crowd is Chandra Narayan Devkota. Going by his weight and height, one would say he is a year old but Chandra turned three recently. He does not play with the other children but clings to his mother and looks around listlessly at his surroundings. The scale shows that Chandra weighs a little over ten kilograms while a child of his age would normally weigh about 14 kilos. The auxiliary health worker, Jay Lal Neupane quizzes Laxmi on the quantity and quality of food she is giving him. Laxmi recalls, �He stopped growing when he was six months old but I could not address the problem as I had to toil in the field the whole day and moreover I did not know what to do.�

A year later, when the social mobilisers advised her to take Chandra to the district hospital, it was too late! He was already chronically malnourished. The hospital could not do much for the baby. �They referred me to the International Nepal Fellowship (INGO) which kept him for 12 days and fed him well which helped him to gain two kilos,� says she. After that she learnt to feed her baby with sarvottam flour (a mixture of soyabean, corn and barley) that is full of nutrients and essential for a child�s growth. Laxmi is doing her best to ensure that Chandra recovers his health. She is one of the strongest advocates for other mothers in the three villages to get their children weighed and fed properly. �I don�t want other mothers to go through
what I went�, she says.

Malnutrition or undernourishment is a major problem in Nepal. The country has one of the highest percentages of undernourished and stunted children. According to the child growth standard chart developed by WHO in 2006, the undernourished children suffer from slow mental growth. This is due to the fact that 80 percent of the brain is and developed within two years of age. Mothers at the health post say that they cannot give their children anything else than rice, potatoes, and occasionally some spinach and apples in season. Milk is a luxury as livestock cannot survive in the cold of Jumla.

Jumla is at an altitude of 2370 metres and not much grows there. It is one of the most deprived and
disadvantaged districts of Nepal . The local people toil hard in the field but the yield is very low. Between
April-May 2009, 365 children under the age of five were weighed for signs of malnutrition in Chandanath
village and 49 were found to be severely undernourished while more than half were below the safe line.
There are only 9 health posts for 30 villages which makes it difficult for children to be checked on a regular
basis.

Under the auspices of UNDP/SNV Localization of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) project,
the Jumla DDC has now allocated budget in their district development plans and programmes to provide
better health services and reduce malnutrition. It has also compiled the data which includes the number of
malnourished children in all 30 villages of the district. The project started in 2007 in Jumla along with five other districts.

United Nations Development Programme

Nepal

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