MALNUTRITION IN KARAMOJA, FROM THE EXPERT’S PERSPECTIVE
St. Kizito Hospital Matany Nutrition Unit
Malnutrition is a condition or encounter, which is never desirable in a young child’s early life development. However, undernutrition is a reality that many young children are suffering from without their choice. Mr. Samuel, a well-trained and educated personnel, has added this fact to our attention. He offers us some perception of the problem of malnutrition in this interview.
Mr. Samuel Korobe is a Nutrition intern at St. Kizito Health Center Matany, Uganda, and a fourth-year scholar of Uganda Christian University pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Human Nutrition and Clinical Dietetics. He also holds a Diploma in Clinical and Community Nutrition with 7 years of experience amongst diverse non-governmental organizations; NGOs. Besides the above, Mr. Samuel works with the NUYOK project, handling the sensitization of the groups on good child feeding and caring practices, hygiene, and good child survival outcomes.
What may have influenced Mr. Samuel to pursue a course(s) on nutrition?
Being born in Karamoja, He has grown up seeing and experiencing instances of malnutrition because of bad nutrition status among groups. This arose emotions of pity and the need to be of assistance to those groups. In his words, “Malnutrition is something I couldn’t appreciate. I continually visited hospitals, handiest to locate, a multitude of kids who’re significantly and reasonably undernourished”. He constantly needed to work with any Nongovernmental organizations willing to cope with the element of malnutrition inside the Karamoja vicinity. This continually pushed him a long way and effectively, he has now finished his ambition at St. Kizito Hospital Matany, for which he chants hymns of praise.
What is malnutrition in line with Mr. Samuel?
Etymologically, the term is derived from a Latin word, “malus” which is translated as “terrible”. Therefore, placed simply, malnutrition manner something awful. But it can be literally out that ‘Malnutrition is a state of affairs where the body has insufficient nutrients or lacks adequate vitamins.’ The loss of vitamins inside the frame exposes the former to numerous dangers of illnesses e.g., kwashiorkor, marasmus, and anemia.
He places forward unique not unusual sorts of malnutrition; under-nutrition and over-nutrition. Taking a close take, look at the Karamoja vicinity, the most version shape is under-nutrition, characterized by wasting, stunting, underweight, and so on. But the Hospital Nutrition unit mostly manages the wasting, stunting is a protracted-time period presentation of malnutrition, it interprets this after a failure to control the wasting, and it’s in no way reversible as soon as it has happened. “Stunting severely influences the child’s mind improvement and development which later attributes to such a lot of complications inside the body of the child.
What are the facts that aid his assertions?
The trend demonstrates that the hospital unit gets a full-size wide variety of instances from diverse catchment areas together with the OPD, pediatric ward, and TB ward, with the pediatric ward receiving the general public of instances. “On common, we get 5 sufferers each day in the unit, except on Sunday because it is a relaxation day, so we get these individuals who come presenting with SAM with edema and SAM without edema, however a few with other clinical troubles like ophthalmia, and what we do is stabilize them.” So, in terms of admissions, the health center has received this range of cases, each inpatient and outpatient, since the start of this financial year, FY 2021/2022
Monthly Admissions
| Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | |
| Inpatient | 24 | 28 | 21 | 17 | 19 | 30 | 23 | 26 | 62 | 32 |
| Outpatient | 24 | 10 | 05 | 06 | 05 | 07 | 11 | 07 | 09 | 05 |
What’s the cure rate in keeping with Mr. Samuel?
INPATIENT overall performance
| Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | |
| Cured | 35 | 37 | 24 | 18 | 27 | 31 | 22 | 12 | 61 | 48 |
| Cure rate | 100% | 100% | 100% | 95% | 100% | 97% | 100% | 100% | 97% | 100% |
| Deaths | 00 | 00 | 00 | 01 | 00 | 01 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| Default | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| Total discharges | 35 | 37 | 24 | 17 | 27 | 29 | 22 | 12 | 60 | 48 |
OUTPATIENT overall performance
| Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | |
| Cured | 21 | 18 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 03 | 01 | 06 | 06 | 17 |
| Cure rate | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Deaths | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| Default | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 |
| Total discharges | 21 | 18 | 13 | 10 | 10 | 03 | 01 | 06 | 07 | 17 |
Source: Integrated Nutrition register (INR) and Unit monthly reports FY 2021/2022
The best information, in step with sphere standards, the cure rate is supposed to be 75%, which we had been capable of exhibiting. The Nutrition unit’s crew is ecstatic to look at kids reap their theoretical ability for us. The power you acquire from it clears our brains of any doubts. Since July of the last year 2021, our therapy charge has been higher than expected, thanks to the clinic and UNICEF, which must provide therapeutic feeds like F-75, F-100, ReSoMal, and other Ready to use Therapeutic feeds (RUTF) used in feeding the children, but this does not rule out different food lack of confidence demanding situations that contribute to child malnutrition.
Poverty: the terrifying stage of absolute poverty in Karamoja has been an international’s attraction for a long time now, with many people unable to shop for food and different needs required for their own family’s successful operation, mainly among those dwelling in severe poverty. In step with the intern student, kids are the maximum prone, as most families only consume one meal consistent with day with few or no vitamins, that’s unhealthy.
Animal rustling has become an epidemic of lack of confidence. The devilish practice is plunging the vicinity into extreme peril, leaving us with nothing to eat; you can see what has occurred in the previous couple of months; cattle rustling has misplaced many cows and destroyed properties; people’s granaries looted from the villages; so, anticipate a shortage of nutritional diets among families and in the long run, kids will be the first victims of severe hunger, so we are anticipating an increase in the variety of malnourished kids.
In this local community, three-quarters of the population live in abject poverty. This is major because of seasonal crop failure leading to food shortage, House Hold low incomes that reduce the affordability of a variety of foods in the market among others. Therefore, it is important to note that Malnutrition is not desirable in the Karimojong Communities, but it is rather unavoidable when the factors highlighted and others come to play.
If you wish to be part of the agents of change who are sacrificing to turn around the malnutrition statistics in Karamoja, kindly partner with St. Kizito Hospital Matany, a Center of Health excellence in Karamoja, and other regions.
”We Dress The Wound, God Heals It”
