News
Early this month, we entered a partnership with the Malnutrition Unit of the Sally Mugabe Children’s Hospital to conduct research into the relationship between childhood disability and malnutrition in Harare. Children with disability may be a vulnerable group for undernutrition in underserved communities. The Malnutrition Unit will visit 14 centres in Harare, of which we are one. The study will take place over a year.
We are proud to be part of this study to assess the nutritional status of our children which will inform us in our nutritional and food project. The research will also assess feeding difficulties and teach the caregivers how they can feed the children without the difficulties, what other feeding challenges they face and together find options that work for the child and caregiver. The caregivers will also be given cooking demonstrations on how to cook food in a way that the children can eat safely, while at the same time preserving and adding nutritional value to the food. Emphasise is given on use of food in season Caregiver counselling is a big component of the feeding project. One of the significant pathways of malnutrition in children with disability is difficulty in eating and swallowing which is exacerbated by lack of skills in feeding the children, fatigue and/or lack of time, if the caregiver has to go to work.
