Ten-month-old Precious lives with her parents and grandmother in a plywood house in a mountainous region of the Philippines. Her mother is a housewife, while her father is a security guard. Precious weighs much less than other children her age.
Precious has been diagnosed with moderately acute malnutrition. She began $184 malnutrition treatment on October 19. 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 hope that Precious will become healthy and strong,” says her mother, “so that she will become a teacher someday.”
