In just seven months VSO volunteer Maria Hernandez has transformed the Magbenteh Therapeutic Feeding Centre from a tired and unwelcoming building into a haven of care and centre of education for seriously ill babies and their mothers. But with malnutrition the biggest threat to the life of a child born in Sierra Leone there is still much to be done, which is why VSO is committing to a new programme of work that will focus on maternal and child health.
Magbenteh Therapeutic Feeding Centre is a few hundred bumpy metres off the main road heading into the city of Makeni in central Sierra Leone. If you didn’t know it was there you’d miss it, which is part of its charm and challenge.
The peaceful residential centre offers a lifeline to severely malnourished babies who are undergoing a programme of therapeutic feeding. As well as the feeding programme, health educators offer mothers advice on nutrition, care and hygiene that, if acted on, should ensure their babies do not become ill again.
Although a health centre existed at Magbenteh before the civil war, it has only recently reopened, following commitment from UNICEF to provide the milk. Although the centre is receiving supplies, it is only through the expertise of VSO volunteer Maria Hernandez that the centre became able to start welcoming mothers.
A community nurse from the Philippines, Maria was involved in establishing her home country’s first therapeutic feeding centre 15 years ago. It later became UNICEF’s model centre. She is repeating history in Sierra Leone; making sure health educators are in place, the centre has facilities for the mothers and toys for the children and decorating the corridors with educational posters.
Her colleagues call the transformation of the centre “remarkable”, while she helps them draw strength from her experience. “When things are hard and we’re struggling I tell them that it was like this in the Philippines, that we worked long hours for small salaries. But I also tell them how much it has improved and how now we do not need therapeutic feeding, only supplementary feeding.”
One mother who has benefited is Saimu Koroma. When she arrived at Magbenteh her two-year-old son Mohammed was close to death. “I was sick so was forced to wean Mohammed early but he became very ill. He was feverish and coughing and I thought he was going to die. One day I was out working and a lady I did not know came up to me and told me that her baby had lived after she came to Magbenteh and I should go there quickly.”
Saimu’s story is not unusual: malnutrition is the biggest threat to the life of a child born in Sierra Leone. Currently, more than a third of children under five are chronically malnourished and with one in every four children dying before their fifth birthday the country has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world.
It seems remarkable then that the feeding centre, with a capacity for 60 mothers and babies, has so far only ever been half full. The simple fact is that people just do not know the service exists. Not even the local hospital was aware of its services. Maria is addressing this: the hospital is now referring all malnourished babies to the centre and a new arrangement with a Dutch NGO should mean there is regular transport from local villages for those who can’t reach the centre.
After almost two months at Magbenteh, Mohammed is chubby and healthy and ready to go home. Talking about her imminent return to her village Saimu says: “When I return home I will visit other women in my community and share with them what I have learnt. A stranger helped and in doing so saved my baby from dying, so it is my duty to now help other mothers.”
It is exactly this commitment to sharing learning that Maria is looking to capitalise on to address the underlying causes of child malnutrition: “The best way to reduce infant death from malnutrition is to ensure they do not become ill in the first place, and the best way to do that is through community education. In the second half of my placement I will be developing a network of community educators who will work with mothers in their local villages to improve understanding of the benefits of breast feeding and the importance of nutrition and hygiene.”
Maria’s placement was a pilot. VSO Sierra Leone wanted to understand whether it was possible to run an effective health programme in a country with such weak systems and infrastructure and lack of access to services for patients. The impact Maria has made in such a short time has demonstrated clearly that there is a role for VSO health volunteers and readiness of people in Sierra Leone to adopt new procedures and practices.
VSO has now committed to opening a health programme Sierra Leone with a focus on maternal and child health. We are aiming to recruit 13 volunteers in the first year.
