As an assistant nurse, Tangiza Tangiza has seen hundreds of children in his community suffering from chronic malnutrition. It never gets easier — hearing the pleas of desperate mothers, seeing the defeat in listless, ill children. But Tangiza now has a growing confidence in his ability to address the overwhelming task ahead of him. Because of your compassion, he can.
Kholoma's sister Milomba brings Kholoma to Katembo Health Center where Nurse Tangiza screens her for malnutrition.
Tangiza works at the Katembo Health Center in the Kasai province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Across the country, some 6 million children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Stunting is a harsh reality here — a condition which not only impedes physical growth in children, but cognitive growth as well.
Many of the children that come to his clinic are repeat patients. They receive treatments of Plumpy'Nut, a ready-to-eat therapeutic food, only to relapse when the treatment has ended. Kholoma Fandji is one of the patients that he has seen return again and again.
Kholoma's sister Milomba brings Kholoma to Katembo Health Center where Nurse Tangiza screens her for malnutrition.
At four years old, Kholoma has spent half of her life chronically malnourished. She first fell ill two years ago, soon after her father’s departure to Angola. Her family took her to the health center, and she received her first treatment of Plumpy'Nut. Since then, she has been stuck in the same cycle of recuperation and relapse: when on Plumpy'Nut she gets better. As soon as the treatment ends, she relapses into malnutrition.
Each day, Kholoma's older sister accompanies their mother to the field, which is an hour away, leaving her four younger siblings to fend for themselves, often with no food until they return late in the evening.
“My father went to Angola,” she says. “He's already been gone almost three years. We suffer to eat. We don't have food. Diseases contaminate us, and we have no one to look after us.”
Raising awareness is key to combatting malnutrition
Nurse Tangiza is determined to change the trajectory of his community. He focuses on teaching families how to stay healthy going forward.
“All you need to do is raise awareness and repeat,” he says. “This is what we are doing, raising the community awareness because the Plumpy’Nut won't last forever. The community must know that they can have gardens at home. People should know that it is our own food that they bring us in Plumpy’Nut. Because if we check in Plumpy’Nut, there are peanuts. There is maize. There are beans. It's the food that we produce ourselves here in our community. It’s being manufactured and brought back to us. That's why we're always strengthening awareness — for community-based nutrition.”
Staff at the Katembo Health Center. Your support is training health care workers to combat malnutrition for the long term.
Because of your support, Tangiza is part of a larger change that is happening in Kasai. He is one of hundreds of community health workers recently trained as part of a community-based nutrition initiative.
Your generosity has armed hundreds of health workers with the knowledge and tools they need to combat malnutrition once and for all in their communities. All in all, more than 14,000 community health workers will be trained, sharing the same messages as Tangiza across seven villages in Kasia. It’s part of a seven-step certification process to ensure that change is sustainable and long-lasting, including looking at local causes of malnutrition within the community and offering local solutions.
Because of you, Nurse Tangiza and his fellow health workers are one step closer to breaking the vicious cycle of hunger in their communities. Thank you!