I'm finding that I'm not getting as much time as I'd like to post (even though my course hasn't started yet!), so I'll keep this brief.
Severe Acute Malnutrition kills 1,000,000 children every year (source: WHO). That works out to 1 child every 30 seconds - 10 kids in the 5 minutes it takes to drink one cup of coffee - 60 kids in the half an hour on the tube in to work in the morning, and another 60 on the journey home. I briefly touched upon the Community-based Therapeutic Care (CTC) approach jointly spearheaded by Concern and Valid in an earlier post.
For those who might be interested, this press release and Joint Statement from the UN system (WHO, WFP, UNICEF et al) from June 2007 touches upon CTC, and effectively endorses it as their preferred approach for dealing with severe malnutrition and recommends member governments to adopt it within their public health systems.
As an aside, Concern Worldwide is also now on YouTube so that it is easier to see (as well as read about) some of their work. The first upload is a 10 minute feature on Chad and the spillover from Darfur.
When I have more time, I'll try and post something on an incisive - and very illuminating - book by a Cambridge economist.
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