New From Science: Cuts to Helen Keller’s Nutrition Work Create Life-threatening Consequences
In a new piece for Science, Catherine Offord details the escalating threats to the health and lives of children due to reduced government funding to combat severe malnutrition. An estimated 2.3 million children with severe malnutrition will lose access to treatment, causing an additional 369,000 preventable child deaths per year.
The article spotlights the impacts of the US Government’s funding suspension on Helen Keller Intl’s USAID Integrated Nutrition Activity in Nepal, which had been helping provide screening and treatment for malnutrition to children in hard-to-reach areas. The program has since been forced to halt operations, cutting off access to urgently needed care.
“Now, some children who previously received treatment are relapsing, and others are becoming newly ill, says Pooja Pandey Rana, who was managing the project. Mothers traveling to health centers have been turned away empty-handed because supplies haven’t arrived, she adds. ‘It’s heartbreaking.’”
Offord’s article cites data from a report analyzing the impacts of the aid cuts published as a comment in the journal Nature by a consortium of experts in nutrition and food security. The comment also references Helen Keller’s USAID Advancing Nutrition program in Nigeria, which previously provided nutrition services to 5.6 million children, as an example of the work being undermined by the funding suspensions.
The consortium warns that these significant cuts – amounting to nearly half of the funding for food aid – risk undoing decades of progress against malnutrition.
Read the full article in Science.
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