Humanitarian crisis in the Sahel: ALIMA strengthens its Rapid Response Mechanism
Large-scale population displacements, a proliferation of armed attacks and high levels of food insecurity have contributed to a humanitarian emergency in the ‘three-border zone’ of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. To meet the ever-increasing needs, ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) is strengthening its Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), which aims to ensure access to medical and nutritional care for the most vulnerable people, within a context marked by a deterioration or withdrawal of essential public health facilities.
“My name is Mustapha and I am a nutritionnal assistant here, in Nigeria”
“My name is Mustapha. I am a nutritional assistant here at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital. I work in ALIMA’s Intensive Therapeutic Feeding Center (ITFC). I want to help children’s health and know everything about nutrition. I am currently also studying to become a nurse. I am currently in my first year of the three-year training course. I go to class whenever I am not working here. I like pediatrics, to take good care of the children.”
ALIMA’s innovative approach to fighting malnutrition gaining momentum
The number of mothers in the Sahel trained to screen their children for malnutrition should increase in 2018, following a recommendation by the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO) that all partner organisations teach mothers to regularly measure the mid-upper arm circumference of their children at home using a simple, tri-colored measuring tape, known as the MUAC.
Bernardin: The Detective
“My name is Bernardin Koalga, but they call me ‘the detective.’” This is how the 40-year-old health agent from Burkina Faso introduces himself.
Bernardin, who is in charge of finding children who have defaulted from ALIMA/SOS Medecins/Keoogo malnutrition treatment programs in the Yako health district, in the north of the country, is on a mission to get all malnourished kids back into treatment.
Read on to learn more about his life-saving work.
Optimizing the Treatment of Malnutrition
Since 2012, ALIMA and its partners have been training mothers and other caregivers across Africa to use a simple, tri-colored bracelet, known as the MUAC, to screen their children for the earliest signs of malnutrition.
Nigeria: New Specialized Training Center for the treatment of Malnutrition
Dakar, 10 November 2017 – At the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), some 40 health workers from across northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State, will be enrolled in a newly created, specialized training school to improve the quality of care provided to children under the age of five who suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) with complications. The program, which will be run by ALIMA (the Alliance for International Medical Action), in partnership with UNICEF and the UMTH, at ALIMA’s Intensive Therapeutic Feeding Center (ITFC) within the UMTH, is the first of its kind in Borno State.
Burkina Faso: Capitalize New Research to Treat Acute Malnutrition
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the medical humanitarian organizations ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) released the findings from a study in Burkina Faso, which treated more than 1,600 children with moderate acute malnutrition. The results, published on September 11, 2017 in the open access medical journal PLOS Medicine, showed that corn-soy porridge should be replaced with a lipid-based nutrient supplement (LNS), a fortified peanut butter. The results of the study can be used directly both in the treatment and prevention of acute malnutrition.
South Sudan: « Each day we continue to save the lives of our patients »
At the Raja State Hospital in South Sudan’s Lol State, the power goes out each morning. It won’t come back on for another 12 hours. Health staff can switch on a newly-acquired generator to provide electricity to the most important machines – including two oxygen compressors – but the rest of the hospital remains without lights or fans. There is still no functioning lab on the grounds to diagnose some pathologies or allow for blood transfusions.
South Sudan: Populations threatened by nutritional crisis
DAKAR, May 15, 2017 – For nearly three years, South Sudan has been plagued by a civil war that has displaced 1.9 million people, leaving more than 5 million people in need of food assistance and more than one million children suffering from acute malnutrition. The collapse of the latest peace agreement in July 2016 made the already fragile situation even more dire.
Following an exploration mission in March 2017 to assess needs, the medical organization ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) deployed an emergency medical intervention in the city of Raja in the northwestern state of Lol.
Nigeria: 3 questions to Aziz Ould Mohamed
Aziz Ould Mohamed is head of mission for ALIMA in Niger. In July, he helped set up ALIMA’s emergency response in Monguno in northeastern Nigeria where the organization is providing medical care for thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) facing an extreme health crisis.
