19th September, 2011
Hunger and malnutrition increasingly affecting Nairobi’s urban poor
In a tiny one roomed mud-walled cubicle in Soweto East, one of the villages in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, Esther Mueni rocks her tiny eight week-old baby. A basin of soiled baby clothes sits at one corner of the room, a three-stone-fireplace located in the middle of the earthen floor, embers burn low, while a tattered curtain divides the room on which a thin mattress lies.
Esther is on a supplementary feeding programme designed by AMREF for lactating mothers and children under five. Community health worker, Philomena Wanjohi, discovered her a few weeks after birth, starving and unable to produce any milk for her infant.
“The baby was crying constantly, I didn't have any milk, since I didn't have money to buy food for myself.''
''I was given Unimix at the health centre, which I take twice daily. Most times that’s all I survive on,” says Esther, who had her baby at home.
Kenya is battling a severe drought that has caused a serious food shortage in most parts of the country. While the Horn of Africa has been fronted as bearing the brunt of the hunger crisis, many urban poor are faced with severe food shortages as inflation runs amok and unemployment bites hard. Faced with starvation back in the rural areas, large numbers have migrated to informal settlements like Kibera, in the hope of securing casual work in the city.
Kenya's casual workers live on about Sh200 (USD 2.15) daily for an average household of seven.
As Esther has discovered, it is tough in the city.“I was pregnant when we came to Nairobi. A friend found us this house. I started washing clothes for people, and would earn enough money to buy clothes and food.” But things changed when she gave birth and was too weak to work. She could no longer afford to feed her children, and the family now depends on a kind neighbour for food. “When there is nothing to eat, we share the Unimix that I get from the AMREF clinic. If I am lucky, I get Sh50 [USD 50 cents] shillings from a good Samaritan. My biggest worry now is that we might be evicted from the house.”
The cost of living has been spiraling month after month, with August 2011 alone registering a 24 per cent inflation rate up from a year earlier, while general inflation rose to 16.7 per cent ,according to The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics it is no wonder, then, that malnutrition levels have been on the rise. Surveys have continued to show reduced intake of meals among the urban poor. According to a KEMRI/CDC nutrition survey in two villages in Kibera, 90 per cent of urban slum households were reducing meal frequency and quantities.
“We are diagnosing more cases of malnutrition and underweight children in our clinic,” says Deborah Kioko, a nutritionist at the Kibera Community Health Centre, where AMREF has set in motion activities to mitigate the effects of drought among children under five, people living with HIV, and pregnant and lactating mothers among the urban poor.
The monthly averages of severe malnutrition at the Kibera Community Health Centre have gone up from an average of 35 patients a year ago to 84 currently and there are indications that the figure will grow.
And as children return to school for the final term this year, Ann Gitimu, a public health specialist who is in charge of AMREF’s school feeding programme in Kiberahas, observed a new trend – an exodus of children from schools that have no feeding programmes to those that do. Levels of truancy have also risen.
“They either stop going to school altogether, or go where they can get food,” notes Ann. She adds that those who drop out are most likely to end up living on the streets as they try to fend for themselves.
AMREF is helping women like Esther support themselves and their children at this difficult time.
If you would like to help , please support AMREF's work in Kenya by donating online