On Mothering Sunday alone, around 30,000 children under the age of five will die from preventable causes. That amounts to around 11 million children in a year, according to the UN. Awut Madut Yout of Luac, of Southern Sudan, is determined that her baby daughter will not become another statistic.
When Thial Mangiong was born she refused breast milk and was too young for cow’s milk. With no clinics nearby, Awut tried feeding Thial Mangong a solution of salt and sugar for the first seven days but knew it was not enough to keep her baby alive for very long.
“I was worried … I thought my child will not survive,” she said. Awut had every right to be concerned. In Southern Sudan, the infant mortality rate stands at 150 deaths for every 1,000 live births.
With no clinic in Luac to care for the baby, Awut and her husband had no choice but to move to Thiet, where World Vision runs the Community Therapeutic Centre (CTC) for malnourished children. Normally CTC only accepts babies that are at least six months old, but at only seven days old, Thial Mangong’s condition was already so desperate that she risked being malnourished.
The baby was admitted and fed with powdered milk for the first few weeks before being moved onto a nutritional feed given to severely malnourished children. Her condition stabilised and she was able to return home, with World Vision supplying the family with a goat to provide milk. Now the family have settled permanently in Luac so that Thial Mangong and her three siblings can stay close to the CTC.
Says Awut: “I cannot go back to Luac. My children are well off here…I need to be here so that my children will continue benefiting from the World Vision support.”
Sylvia Sasai knows all too well of another threat to millions of children across the African continent: malaria. In Narok, southern Kenya, where she lives with her seven children, the rains are a mixed blessing. Without them, the crops would fail but in the stagnant water and long grass, the malaria-carrying anopheles mosquito thrives.
Sylvia’s son Lemashol is seven but still at nursery school. The malaria that has plagued him for most of his life leaves him weak and unable to leave the home for days, sometimes weeks.
“Malaria makes my body feel weak, I get a fever and my body feels very hot, like it is on fire,” he explains. “I don’t feel like eating when food is brought. Malaria makes me feel very dull, so dull that I cannot even go outside and play with my friends. I can’t even go to school and sometimes, I go for even two weeks without going to school. I don’t eat much. I just stay at home in pain.”
