15-month-old Yella Mae loves to sing, dance, and play. She lives with her family in a wooden house without electricity and or a water supply. Her father is a farmer. He has difficulty providing nutritious meals, so Yella Mae is smaller than other children her age.
Yella Mae has been diagnosed with moderately acute malnutrition. She began $184 malnutrition treatment on October 20. She is being treated by International Care Ministries (ICM), a Watsi medical partner. One out of five children under five in ICM communities is either severely or moderately acutely malnourished. Worldwide, poor nutrition is associated with nearly half of all deaths in young children. In remote communities and urban slums of the Philippines, the lack of clean water and unclean environments add risk to potentially fatal childhood diseases.
ICM’s Home-Based Feeding program provides nutrient-enriched food packs to ensure malnourished children get additional food to regain normal weight and achieve optimum physical and mental development. After identifying a child as malnourished, staff and community volunteers make weekly visits to monitor this child’s progress. To help sustain the health of the child, ICM’s professional staff educate the mother, guardian, or other family members about proper nutrition, sanitation, hygiene, and organic vegetable gardening.
“I wish she can go to school and finish her studies so that she can have a good job,” says Yella Mae’s mother.