Severe acute malnutrition is responsible for one in five deaths of children under five. Right now, supply chains for therapeutic food are collapsing due to funding cuts. Children are paying the price for these cuts but we will not turn our backs on them.
Save the Children is acting fast. With your help, we hope to raise vital funds to provide this lifesaving treatment to thousands of children impacted by severe acute malnutrition, giving children and their families hope for tomorrow.
Together we can make a difference.
Roya was just six months old when she suddenly became very sick. She wouldn’t breastfeed at all and even after her mum took Roya to the village doctor, her health didn’t improve. One day, Roya was vomiting for hours. Her parents took her to the Therapeutic Feeding Unit at the Save the Children mobile health clinic in Afghanistan, where she was diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition.
For several hours Roya, feverish and vomiting, was at risk of death, but with help from Save the Children's medical team, the vomiting finally stopped and the fever broke, and Roya began a course of RUTF. After seven days of being fed from those little 92 gram packs of nutrition, Roya was much healthier but she needed to complete the full course to make sure she got fully better.
Roya remained in the therapeutic feeding unit for a month. Her family was able to be there with her. She slowly gained weight and her health improved immensely. Her mum, Yasamin* was taught how to continue Roya’s treatment at home to ensure she continued to gain weight and stay well. Both parents learnt about the importance of good nutrition to keep the whole family well.
With your support, we can ensure more children like Roya get the lifesaving treatment they need.
Right now, record numbers of children face the threat of hunger as conflicts escalate, the climate crisis intensifies, and global inequality widens. Funding cuts have disrupted the supply of therapeutic food to children affected by severe acute malnutrition. Closer to home in the Pacific, children are also impacted by hunger and food insecurity, with rising sea levels, cyclones, floods, drought and dangerous heatwaves wreaking havoc on food and livelihoods.
But hunger is not a lost cause. Malnutrition is treatable and preventable. We have been providing lifesaving nutritional support to children for over 100 years and are working to address the causes of food insecurity through innovative and transformative programming. Save the Children has the clinics, the teams, and the solutions ready. What we urgently need is funding to get children the help they need.
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