Health
When malnutrition and sickness coincide, easy to treat illnesses like diarrhea can turn fatal. Malnutrition remains an underlying cause in over half of all childhood deaths — some 5 million children each year.
Disease and malnutrition: a self-reinforcing relationship
Recognising the symbiotic relationship between malnutrition and sickness, Action Against Hunger also fights the diseases that accompany poor nutrition. Through our efforts to fight acute, moderate, and severe malnutrition, we not only strive to save children from starvation, but seek to restore them to health. When a child undergoes treatment at a feeding centre, we administer medication to prevent the kinds of infection and illness that can be most devastating if allowed to take root.
The medications dispensed will vary depending on region, country, and national health protocols, but most frequently we administer the following three: Amoxicillin, an antibiotic effective against a wide spectrum of infections; Medendazole, which kills most intestinal worms; and anti-malarial drugs.
Other health related activities include vaccination programmes and vitamin A and iron supplementation for mothers and children. as well as training on fostering health through good nutritional practices. In keeping with our approach to humanitarian aid, we coordinate closely with existing public health system to ensure that our work draws on and strengthens local expertise. In the aftermath of a crisis, Action Against Hunger can help restore the public health infrastructure by fielding mobile health clinics to areas affected by epidemic, by rehabilitating and restocking public health centres, and by training local medical personnel to administer vaccinations and prenatal health care, and identify the symptoms of disease and malnutrition.
- Advocacy
- Nutrition
- Food Security
- Water & Sanitation
- Health
Advocacy
Action Against Hunger works where populations face routine violations of fundamental human needs—access to food, drinking water, land and livelihoods. Advocacy strategies enable us to alert, inform, and influence decision-makers and political actors by packaging and delivering our field expertise, analysis, and recommendations to key stakeholders—publicly or confidentially, depending on the sensitivity of the context. These advocacy strategies allow our agency to address the underlying causes of hunger while delivering direct assistance to those in need.Read More
Nutrition
Action Against Hunger’s nutrition programmes treat and prevent acute malnutrition in those most vulnerable, including young children and women who are pregnant or nursing. The programmes are launched most often during times of crisis: when an earthquake devastates a city, when civil war tears apart a country, when drought leads to famine, when families flee violence only to confront hunger. The context for our programmes can be as varied as the crisis: from rural mountain villages, to ethnically divided cities, to the confines of overcrowded relocation camps for internally displaced persons.
Food Security
Action Against Hunger’s food security programming forms a continuum with the work we do in nutrition. While our therapeutic nutrition programs restore to health individuals suffering from acute malnutrition, our food security programs prevent future outbreaks by supplying needed inputs (seeds, fertilizers, tools, fishing nets, etc.), introducing new techniques, and fortifying coping mechanisms and livelihoods through training in income-generating activities such as farming, gardening, animal breeding, and food conservation. Our food security programs put people on the road to self-sufficiency.Read More
Water, Sanitation & Hygiene
Action Against Hunger’s integrated approach to hunger involves extending water and sanitation services to communities faced with water scarcity, unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene: We truck water into affected communities during emergencies, decontaminate wells and install hand-pumps. Employing sophisticated geophysics, we locate water resources and tap aquifers. We protect natural springs and pipe water into villages and health centers, and rehabilitate damaged infrastructure to ensure access to adequate sources of clean water. We build latrines, bathhouses and introduce basic sanitation infrastructure to keep communities hygienic.Read More
Health
A vicious circle exists between disease and malnutrition. A malnourished child is more vulnerable to diseases than a well-fed child. A sick child, weakened by illness, often becomes a victim of malnutrition. It is therefore necessary to fight disease to combat hunger. We set up mother and child health centers to provide immunization and pre/post-natal care. Our public health programs train medical staff, provide medicine, monitor and control epidemics, and rehabilitate clinics.Read More
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