* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Namojong Woiye is seven months old and bubbling with energy and a radiant smile. She is a stunning contrast to the malnourished baby her mother Eskon held a week earlier.
Weighing less than four kilograms, Namojong was diagnosed with severe malnutrition, a critical condition which required her immediate specialised care. “Food at home is little yet the children are many”, says Eskon.
For several months now, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and its partners, with support from the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), have joined other agencies in an effort to curb malnutrition in the arid Marsabit County in northern Kenya.
Marsabit has one of the highest levels of Acute Malnutrition (GAM), with about one out of four children under five years old being malnourished in the remote and underserved hot-spots.
The programme, which is done through mobile integrated outreaches, targets the hard-to-reach areas and communities around centres like Kurapesa, Namojong’s home village, where malnutrition is linked to limited access to adequate diet, poor knowledge on malnutrition, disease and poverty. The main livelihood in this community is pastoralism.
Namojong was found by the local Community Health Worker (CHW) during one of the supplementary feeding distributions. She had been unwell for three days without access to medication in this remote village. Eskon did not know what was ailing her child.
