Vandy is treated for malnutrition in Laos

How UNICEF and the Government of China are supporting malnourished children in Laos

Andrew Brown
Meena comforts her son Vandy, 6 months, at a community outreach in Laos.
UNICEF/China/2024/Andrew Brown
19 June 2024

Meena is a 20-year-old first time mother from Houay On village in Nan District, Laos. Small and just past her teenage years, she still looks like a child herself. With her six-month old baby Vandy on her back, she walks up the hill to the village hall, where a community outreach from nearby Thongkang Health Centre is taking place. It’s around 9am but already well over 30°C. This is the end of the dry season, and the weather is brutally hot. The hills on the horizon are also much fainter than they should be: slash and burn agriculture has created a constant haze of smog that feels out of place in this rural area.

Inside the village hall, it’s a bit cooler. There’s a high roof and wooden slat walls, through which sunlight streams, creating strips of light and shade on the floor. A wicker basket for weighing children hangs on a rope from the ceiling. A group of around 30 women and children sit along one side on plastic chairs, filling the hall with the sounds of chatting and playing. On the other side, staff from the health centre have set up a consultation table. Meena arrives here with her son and health worker Ounhearn measures his arm circumference with a special tape. The result is red, meaning that he’s severely malnourished. Vandy becomes agitated and starts to cry. Meena comforts him, leaning her forehead against his and making soothing noises.

“Vandy is my first child. He’s just over six months old and his health is not good,” Meena says. “He’s taking very little milk and crying a lot. That’s why I brought him in today. I wanted the doctors to check him and help him to get well. They told me Vandy has malnutrition and I need to feed him more. I feel guilty that I couldn’t take care of my son well enough. I have never had a child before.”

Vandy is treated for malnutrition in Laos

Like many people in Nan District, Meena is a farmer. She lives with her family of nine people in a small wooden house in Houay On village. Recent years have seen increasingly severe droughts and floods due to climate change and crop yields are down. This puts more financial pressure on farmers, leading to an increase in children with malnutrition. If left untreated, this can be fatal. Malnutrition weakens children’s immune systems, leaving them vulnerable to diseases like malaria and pneumonia. That’s why health workers like Ounhearn Phanthachack regularly visit the villages in their area to identify children with malnutrition, get them on to treatment and educate their mothers on good feeding practices.

Nutrition programme

As soon as Ounhearn has identified Vandy as having malnutrition, she enrolls him in the nutrition programme. Another health worker gives Meena a supply of ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), a high-energy, peanut-based paste, and shows her how to use it. Vandy responds well to the treatment and quickly eats all the RUTF, which is a good sign. He will now have regular check-ups at the health centre and a supply of therapeutic food until his weight returns to normal. All of this is free of charge.

“Sometime new mothers like Meena have problems raising a child,” Ounhearn comments. “She has family and economic problems, and not enough time for the baby because she has to go to the farm. Vandy was also born small [premature]. He has slow growth development and gets sick easily. But when he comes to the health centre, we can monitor him and give him basic health and nutrition services.”

Ounhearn holds up the mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) tape she used to measure Vandy’s arm and points to the red colour visible through a window in the white tape. “Red indicates severe acute malnutrition,” she explains. “In this case, we must provide ready-to-use therapeutic food and monitor the child every two weeks. We also provide health education to mothers on how to feed nutritious food and to continue breastfeeding.”

Ounhearn measures Vandy’s upper arm circumference at the community outreach.
UNICEF/China/2024/Andrew Brown
Ounhearn measures Vandy’s upper arm circumference at the community outreach.

UNICEF’s nutrition programme provides RUTF to treat children with malnutrition, community outreach to find malnourished children, nutrition education for parents, and training for health workers. Ounhearn was one of the health workers to receive this training and she credits it with giving her the knowledge and skills to identify and treat malnourished children.”

To reach all children at risk of malnutrition, UNICEF relies on the support of donors. In Nan District, the nutrition programme is funded by the Government of China, through the Ministry of Commerce. Recently, the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) donated a further $1.5 million to improve the health, nutrition and protection of over 220,000 children in Laos.

"On behalf of UNICEF, I would like to thank the Government of China for supporting our nutrition programme in Laos. This has helped us reach more women and children, including here in Nan District, saving many children’s lives," Khamseng Philavong, nutrition specialist at UNICEF Laos, says.

“Even though Laos has made significant progress in the reduction of malnutrition, the prevalence of acute malnutrition here is still high compared with other countries,” Ms Wang Haipei, Third Secretary at the Chinese Embassy in Lao PDR comments. “I’m very glad that our project, funded by China, has come into reality and is making a difference in Laos. UNICEF plays a key role in addressing the needs of children and it has very rich experience. I’m more than confident that through our joint efforts, we can truly help the children in Laos.”

Meena listens to a health education session at the community outreach.
UNICEF/China/2024/Chen Ziyimeng
Meena listens to a health education session at the community outreach.

Health education

Afterwards, Meena watches a health education talk led by Khamseng and staff from the health centre. Meena sits at the front and pays close attention as Khamseng describes the eight food groups and how to ensure that children get at least five of them. She show the mothers a chart and explains that children aged six months to two years, like Vandy, should be introduced to nutritious food while continuing to breastfeed.

Although Meena is still worried about her son, she feels reassured that he’s in treatment and that she now has the knowledge to keep him healthy. “The doctors are taking very good care of Vandy,” she says. “I want to thank them so much. I hope that the treatment will help my son get back to being a normal child with good health.”

“Today, I also learned how cook the right food for a 6-month baby. For example, I can give fruits like banana during the day and make congee [rice porridge] with eggs in the evening. This is very helpful knowledge to make my child stronger and healthier.”

For Ounhearn, seeing children like Vandy recover is the best reward for her work. “Being a health worker is very precious to me,” she says. “When patients come to us, we heal them and help them recover. We’re very proud of that. It’s the greatest reward in our lives.”

Ounhearn unpacks a box of China-funded RUTF at Thongkang Health Centre.
UNICEF/China/2024/Chen Ziyimeng
Ounhearn unpacks a box of China-funded RUTF at Thongkang Health Centre.