Some 400,000 Mozambican children have been reached with essential nutrition services under the programme “Improving Child Nutrition and Strengthening Resilience in Cyclone-Affected Areas of Mozambique”, implemented by Unicef in collaboration with the Mozambican Government and the European Union. The project, which ran for six years, reduced severe chronic malnutrition among children under five to 35% in that province, whose exact location was not specified in the press release.
According to the United Nations agency, the success of the initiative is due to integrated interventions in the health, nutrition, hygiene and sanitation sectors, resulting in a substantial improvement in children's living conditions.
Besides nutrition, significant reductions were recorded in other child health indicators: cough (-8%) and fever (-14.7%), reflecting an effective integration of health actions with hygiene and feeding practices. Unicef also highlights a 4% increase in caregivers' knowledge of, and involvement in, child stimulation practices, fostered by social behaviour change approaches and the promotion of so-called “model families”.
In sanitation, more than two thousand communities were declared free of open defecation, benefiting around 780,000 people and reducing the practice from 46% to 31%. There was also a 20% increase in access to basic sanitation, as well as improvements in dietary diversity among families (+24%) and children (+33%).
For Mary Eagleton, Unicef's representative in Mozambique, “children in that province now have more opportunities to grow up healthy”, while families show a greater capacity to prevent disease and adopt safe hygiene practices.
The European Union's ambassador to the country, Antonino Maggiore, also stressed that the results prove the effectiveness of integrated, evidence-based interventions, with real and lasting impacts.
This effort adds to other government actions. In November, the Government revealed that more than 117,000 children under two receive a state subsidy aimed at reducing chronic malnutrition, which affects 37% of Mozambican children under five.
Prime Minister Benvinda Levi, in a statement made in August, noted a six-percentage-point reduction in the rate of chronic child malnutrition over ten years, despite the persistence of structural causes such as intense and recurrent natural disasters.
Mozambique continues to be among the countries most affected by climate change, facing floods and tropical cyclones during the rainy season, between October and April. The 2018/2019 period was particularly devastating: 714 deaths, of which 648 were caused by Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, considered two of the most destructive to hit the country.
