NGOs step in as urban food crisis deepens

Clutching the plastic cup to her chest like a prized possession, four-year-old Clara Ncube grins broadly as she inches closer to the serving podium at Tshabalala Clinic, a supplementary feeding centre for children in Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo. After a short wait she gets her share and skips off to the patch of shade where dozens of other children are already eating their highly nutritious corn meal porridge. Clara is one of 10,164 children aged six years and below who are being fed by Help Germany, an NGO working to mitigate the effects of food shortages on urban households in Zimbabwe. The supplementary feeding programme operates at all 17 clinics of the Bulawayo City Council and is a joint venture between the NGO and the city's directorate of health services. In Harare, 25,625 children are also benefiting from a similar programme operating at 25 municipal clinics. The pilot programme in both cities, which started in March, has since lapsed to make way for an expanded main programme beginning in November. The children are screened for various health conditions while visiting the council clinics for regular check-ups, to see if they are eligible. "This programme cares for children whose growth is diagnosed as either faltering or static. Some are found to be terribly underweight, or to suffer from other diseases which do not permit body growth," Help Germany's project co-ordinator for Matabeleland Province, Yvonne Neudeck, told IRIN. "We are primarily feeding them on corn-soya porridge. This is a very easy-to-prepare mix that goes with either salt or sugar. We also give the families of beneficiaries a monthly allocation of 10 kg of the corn-soya blend, and one litre of cooking oil. The more the beneficiaries, the bigger the allocation," she added. Information gathered during and after the pilot programme suggested that 30 percent of the children aged six and under in Bulawayo were stunted because of lack of food. "Growth and weight-faltering is a serious a problem among the children. Eight months after the beginning of the pilot programme, the number is growing steadily. In July we thought we were at a peak total of 7,275 children under our programme, but we were feeding 10,164 by the end of September. The number is set to grow, as the shortage of food in urban households is also on the increase," said Neudeck. She noted that while 80 percent of the children in the supplementary feeding programme had shown positive growth and weight gain, 20 percent of the children showed no improvement. "These are the children who end up dying. But the truth is not that they die of malnutrition, as has frequently been said. The children are either HIV-positive, or have tuberculosis, diarrhoea, or any other life-threatening diseases which ends up leading to their death. They still die, even if they are fed on high-energy foods like the nutrimeal porridge supplied by organisations. So malnutrition is not the cause of most of the deaths as reported." Neudeck said visits to the homes of the beneficiaries had revealed there was hardly any food - and the food situation in the homes continued to deteriorate as shortages worsened across the country. "The criteria used by the United Nations and humanitarian organisations states that employed people cannot be beneficiaries in food aid distribution programmes. But, because of the hyper-inflation environment, incomes have been eroded to a point that breadwinners can no longer feed the families. Besides, the food - when it's there, in the shops - is so expensive that some people simply cannot afford it. [Also,] the quality of foods people are ... eating are so low as to have no real nutritional value. The result among children is severe loss of weight and lack of growth," said Neudeck. In conjunction with the World Food Programme (WFP), Help Germany will start a new feeding programme at Bulawayo's 14 primary schools as well as several in Harare. "Education officials have of late reported that school children are fainting during lessons because of lack of food. They had also complained of a drop in individual child performance in the classes and a high number of children dropping totally out of school. So it was decided that the programme be expanded to include children of primary school-going age. This time there is also a plan to include Chitungwiza," she said. A total of 32 schools are expected to participate in the programme by the end of January next year. Schools and parents will provide the sites and personnel to cook and serve the food. "Depending on continued financial support from donors, who include the German government, we would like to expand the programme, not only to include other age groups, but other urban centres around Zimbabwe, since this programme is not confined to the three centres we are currently operating in," said Neudeck. World Vision International, another WFP food distribution implementing agency, announced that it would embark on a similar programme in schools in Zimbabwe's urban centres. The food security situation in Zimbabwe's major urban centres has deteriorated in the last six months. After operating on critically low stocks for some time, the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), the country's sole grain procurement and distribution company, hit the zero mark last month, setting off severe food shortages among urban families that had been dependent on cheap cereals from the GMB, as compared to the exorbitant prices of the parallel market.