For World Food Day, we spoke with Edesia Nutrition to find out more about food in the context of humanitarian programming. Edesia Nutrition is an INGO providing life-saving aid globally. They are a longstanding partner of MOAS and have donated aid to malnutrition programmes in Yemen and Somalia, through this partnership. Through Edesia’s specialized foods that target the different stages of malnutrition, they have saved 17 million lives in 62 countries.
Plumpy Nut®, which was the original product created by Edesia Nutrition, has been ground-breaking. Before, children had to stay in hospitals for weeks, and the formulas they needed to survive were costly, impractical, and administered by stretched medical staff. Portable, ready-to-eat, shelf-stable Plumpy’Nut® has changed everything. Now, there’s no need to find clean water or refrigeration, and children can be treated in hard-to-reach communities.
We had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Edesia Nutrition. Cassidee Jones is the Customer Relations Coordinator at Edesia Nutrition, who we work closely with the organise aid deliveries to communities worldwide. Cassidee spoke to us about malnutrition, therapeutic food treatments and what action we can take to tackle global food insecurity.
Here is a quick snippet of what we discuss:
- Why are therapeutic foods particularly effective in treating malnutrition, in comparison to traditional food groups?
The reason we produce this, when a child is extremely malnourished, food is lethal to them. At that point in time, they need something that is more easily digestible and easier to consume, and these sachets deal with a lack of appetite which happens when you are that malnourished. When you’re that hungry, you’re not hungry. The reason this paste is so easy to consume is that it can be mixed with water, or it can be given in the sachet form. It is less intense for the body to digest, and it has just enough vitamins and minerals that it is safe to, and beneficial to, consume. All the products that go through the line remain in boxes and all of it is handled in a safe and sanitised environment, if food is handled it is handled with gloves. We have high level safety measures as these are going to kids that will be eating it. So, everything that we do is to ensure the child is able to eat food safely, and in a way that restores the loss of weight or physical impacts they are dealing with.
- With malnutrition rates increasing globally and food shortages impacting communities around the world, the SDG goal to ‘End hunger and achieve food security’ seems a distant reality, what can we do both on a global scale and individual level to help create positive change?
I think that this year has been incredibly interesting as the covid pandemic has supressed humanitarian action and has made bigger boundaries to overcome, but at the same time the world has seen how much there need is and so that has been one of the biggest factors in securing more funding in a way we have never seen. The US has just released millions of USD in funding for malnutrition products. While we are seeing increasingly high levels of malnutrition around the world, we are also seeing an awakening from governments and NGOs that we can’t keep doing this, the next generation of humanity is going to suffer. As we feel like we are getting further away from our goals, we are further away today then we have been in 20 years, while that is our reality, we cannot let that defeat us. Edesia strives every day to feed more and more kids, we optimise our lines, we precure more materials, we are adding in shifts, we are striving that our output each day is higher, so that no child’s life is lost – and that’s what matters. Though we’re getting further away from our global SDG goals, we are working day by day to ensure that ends.
MOAS provides this life-saving malnutrition treatment, through our donor Edesia, to aid programmes in Yemen and Somalia.
Watch the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKEhFfr9YtQ
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