A study was conducted in Nsanje district in Malawi to find out the potential of locally available resources in coming up with sustainable nutrition interventions. 60% of malnourished children had their nutrition states improved within twelve days of feeding on locally available foods.Agricultural and Food Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

Kondwani, Charles Nanchukwa

English

Research Papers in Economics

AAAE Conference Proceedings (2007) 589-591 
 
Giving Chance to Indigenous Knowledge In Developing Sustainable Nutrition 
Improvement Interventions 
Kondwani Charles Nanchukwa 
P.O. Box 31245, Lilongwe 3, Malawi 
Abstract 
A study was conducted in Nsanje district in Malawi to find out the potential of locally available resources in 
coming up with sustainable nutrition interventions. 60% of malnourished children had their nutrition states 
improved within twelve days of feeding on locally available foods. 
 
Introduction 
Malnutrition is one of the worst public health 
problems in Malawi. Results of recent research 
indicate that 45.9% of under-five children in the 
country are stunted, 3.3% are wasted, 19.4% are 
underweight, and almost 60% of child deaths are 
caused by malnutrition. There has been much effort 
put in the fight against malnutrition; the government 
alone reports to have spent about 1.5 billion United 
States Dollars in the fight against malnutrition from 
1992 to date. As if undermining all the efforts 
involved, the country is said to have not recorded any 
significant improvement in the nutritional indicators 
for the past three decades.  
There have been a number of nutrition interventions 
running in Malawi. Why they have not been able to 
eradicate malnutrition remains a million dollar 
question in most people’s minds.  In an effort to search 
for sustainable solutions to the problem, a study was 
conducted in Group Village Head Mgona and 
Tsekerere in Nsanje District in Malawi with an aim of 
finding out how much local knowledge and other 
resources from within affected populations would help 
in the fight against malnutrition.  
Materials And Methods 
Nutrition Baseline Assessment 
The first step in the study involved determining the 
level of malnutrition in Mgona and Tsekerere. All 
under-five children in the community (197 in total) 
were weighed and had their nutritional status 
determined by weight-for-age. Weight-for-age is a 
measure of both acute and chronic malnutrition; 
children whose weight-for-age is more than two 
standard deviations below the median of the reference 
population are considered moderately or severely 
underweight while those whose weight-for-age is more 
than three standard deviations below the median are 
classified as severely underweight. Of the 197 under-
five children who were assessed, 87% were found to 
be malnourished by weight-for-age. The results of the 
assessment were presented to the community; each 
individual child’s weight or nutritional status was 
graphically portrayed on a community scoreboard to 
help the community understand the overall nutritional 
status of children in the community. To avoid 
embarrassing some families, the scoreboard only 
showed marks and symbols, not names of children.  
Identification of Positive Behaviours 
According to the baseline assessment, only 13% of 
under-five children in the community were well 
nourished. The study further established that 
households from which the well nourished children 
were coming shared the same resources and faced the 
same risks as the rest of the community. An inquiry 
was therefore made to find out special, or uncommon, 
practices and behaviours that enabled these families to 
find better ways of preventing malnutrition. The 
inquiry found out that contrary to the rest of the 
community most of these households introduced 
complementary foods to their children after six months 
of exclusive breastfeeding and were giving their 
children three main meals a day plus snacks. The most 
common complementary food for these households 
was whole maize meal porridge.  Apart from these, 
these families were feeding their children with 
sorghum, and milk, which are locally available in the 
community but are less consumed by most people. The 
households with malnourished children were 
characterised by introducing complementary foods to 
children before six months; feeding children a 
maximum of two meals per day and feeding them with 
“nsima’-a maize flour based staple and vegetables.  
 Giving Chance To Indegenous Knowledge In Developing Sustainable Nutrition Improvement Interventions 
590   AAAE Ghana Conference 2007 
Planning of community based nutrition education 
and child feeding sessions 
After identification of the positive behaviours 
practiced by care givers of the few well nourished 
children, the malnourished children identified from the 
baseline assessment were divided into 9 groups of 10 
each and 1 group of 12 with their caregivers inclusive. 
The caregivers and their children were assembled 
together in their groups for two hours every day for 12 
days. During each gathering caregivers were preparing 
energy rich and calorie-dense foods, (which were 
learnt from households with well nourished children), 
and fed their children under the guidance of care 
givers of the well nourished children. The care givers 
also learnt about locally available nutritious foods, 
positive child caring practices and health care 
behaviours based on findings from the inquiry on the 
few households. Care givers were making a daily 
contribution of foods needed for the meals. After the 
twelve days, all the children had their nutritional state 
assessed. The objectives of the sessions were to 
quickly rehabilitate the malnourished children; to 
enable the families involved sustain the rehabilitation 
of the children and to improve adoption of appropriate 
child caring, feeding and health seeking practices 
learnt from the model households from within the 
same community.  
 
 
A care giver feeding  
 
 
 
 
 
Care givers preparing food for children. 
Results And Discussion 
After 12 days of feeding from the locally available 
nutritious foods, the children had their nutritional 
status assessed. Results from the assessment indicated 
that 60% of the children had gained a minimum of 400 
grams from the time of admission i.e. after 12 days of 
feeding on various locally available nutritious foods. 
According to the Child Survival Collaborations and 
Resources Group (2003), children who achieve 
between 400 and 800 grams of weight gain are 
growing fast or faster than the “International Standard 
Median” and are considered a successful outcome. 
Follow up home visits made indicated that care givers 
continued feeding their children with the food learnt 
over the 12 days period and were practicing 
appropriate practices they got trained on.  
A comparative analysis with supplementary feeding 
programme, a nutrition feeding programme that is 
running in the same district, indicated that this 
community based intervention is comparatively more 
effective in terms of both treatment and sustainability. 
The supplementary feeding programme involves 
providing food rations i.e. fortified corn soya blend 
mixed with vegetable oil, to moderately malnourished 
children; average length of stay before gaining target 
nutritional status in the programme was found to be at 
least four weeks. As already pointed out, the pilot 
intervention took only twelve days to come up with a 
cure rate of 60%. Food supplements involved in the 
supplementary feeding programme are not locally 
available and can not be afforded by an average 
Malawian in a rural setting hence no potential for 
sustainability. The piloted intervention, on the other 
hand, used the very same resources (food and 
knowledge) that are available in the community for 
treating malnutrition. This has an advantage of not Kondwani, C.N. 
Africa’s Food and Nutrition Challenges  591 
only providing the needed recovery but also 
sustainability as resources involved are within the 
reach of the community.  
Conclusion 
Some solutions to malnutrition already exist in the 
communities and just need to be discovered. There is 
local knowledge in the communities, which if tapped, 
has the potential to turn things around. 
Acknowledgements 
The author acknowledges contributions made to this 
study by the Nsanje Nutrition Team for GOAL 
Malawi, the Nsanje District Agriculture Office and the 
Foundation for Irrigation and Sustainable  
Development (FISD).  
References 
Mahshid Ahrari, Robert F. Houser, Siham Yassin, 
Mona Mogheez, Y. Hussain, Patrick Crump, 
Gary L. Darmstadt, David Marsh and F. 
James Levinson. 2006. A Positive Deviance-
based Antenatal Nutrition Project Improves 
Birth-weight in Upper Egypt, International 
Centre for Diarrhoea Disease Research, 
Bangladesh. 
Nutrition Working Group, Child Survival 
Collaborations and Resources Group 
(CORE). 2003. Positive Deviance/Hearth: A 
Resource Guide or Sustainably Rehabilitating 
Malnourished Children, Washington DC. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Giving Chance to Indigenous Knowledge In Developing Sustainable Nutrition Improvement Interventions

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Research Papers in Economics