Umkhanyakude has some of the worst child malnutrition numbers in all of the province’s districts, and KwaZulu-Natal fares worst among South Africa’s provinces.
A young boy fetches water from the river canal using broken fencing to safely walk up and down the sides of the canal. Picture: Black Star/Spotlight
The high numbers are only partially explained by the fact that KwaZulu-Natal is South Africa’s second most populous province. It is not known how many children died of SAM outside of hospital or how many children died of other diseases like tuberculosis while also suffering from SAM. Aside from the Jozini Community Health Centre, residents travel far to other facilities. Picture: Black Star/Spotlight
The organisation used to run a food parcel programme to support 30 families per month, but since 2015 hasn’t received funding for this programme.Siyaphambili social worker, Nonkululeko Buthelezi, says that often children between the ages of 10 and 13 spoke to her about facing hunger. One family will have maize meal and chicken feet for their day’s cooked meal. Picture: Black Star/Spotlight
The neighbours told Spotlight that because of this, the children do not get enough to eat nor personal hygiene items or clothing. He says that in prior years protein porridge was distributed by the department of health, but this is no longer the case.“The issue of hunger is widespread throughout all the wards,” says Dube.
A shining light in the organisation is their orange Starfish Wellness Wagon, a child-friendly mobile clinic that visits primary schools four days a week for health screening. “They were admitting, now and then, the malnourished children to hospital, it was so bad,” added Myeni. According to the department two thirds of SAM fatalities occurred within the first year of life, and were attributed to poor infant feeding, poverty and food insecurity and comorbidity with HIV/Aids, TB or other conditions.“The role of the health sector here is to identify children with or at risk of undernutrition, treat the acute issues and link affected children and families to appropriate support systems especially the department of social development and the social security agency.
“This can be seen through the achievements in reducing the provincial severe acute malnutrition case fatality rate at hospital level, increasing Vitamin A coverage at community level and improvement in exclusive breastfeeding rates at all levels,” he says.Spotlight previously published an article arguing that hunger, stunting and obesity were among the top issues to watch in children’s health for 2020, and experts are calling them the “triple burden”.
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