Hi again,
The first official week of our project has been completed and over all went pretty well. Most of the children show up for their therapy but we send them back to rest up if they are having diarrhea or fever.
The children come to the center every day (for the M3) and three times a week (the M2), they come to get weighed, get the milk (see pictures of Caro and Van in action distributing the milk) and soup. The mothers stay at the center all morning and are suppose to participate to help make the soup (it helps them learn how to cook properly with the essentiel ingredients to make a healthy soup). They also can feed them extra food they bring from home. For those that have a feeding tube, it usually is because they have lost their appetite and need to be fed by the tube.
There are two main types of malnutrition:
1) Marasmus, which is also called the "dry malnutrition" and they are deprived of energy and proteins. These children are typically skin and bones (see the picture of me with the skinny little girl, she is 14 months old). Their faces become wrinkled and the often have the face of an old person.
2) Kwashiorkor, which is also called the "wet malnutrition" which is the type of malnutrition where the children have edema, are irritable, loss of appetite (anorexia) and have ulcerating dermatoses. Their hair often gets thin and brittle as well and they usually have a distended belly.
The main difficulties for us are that the children cry and lot, they are not use to being apart from the mothers and are not very stimulated at home in general. We are trying to make sure that the babies have been fed before coming to therapy to make sure that they are not crying because they are hungry....
We see a lot of potential in most children and will keep doing our best in the following 5 weeks. We also plan on doing a "causerie" with the mothers to educate them of a specific subject. We have many ideas but haven't decided on one yet....
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