Recently, Vitamin Angels’ Program Coordinator, Cami Allen, traveled to Burundi to work with our field partner Food for the Hungry and to observe distributions of vitamin A donated by Vitamin Angels for use during the Mother-Child Health Week.

June 23, 2010

Mothers line the rural, red dirt road leading to the nearest distribution site in Kayanza Province, Burundi. Babies and infants are fastened around their waists in colorful wraps and small children walk alongside them, small hands fitting neatly into their mothers’ hands. Small groups travel together from their villages to the nearest distribution site. Some women and older children effortlessly balance baskets of bananas on their heads. Once the mothers and children have attended the local health clinic, they will go to the market to sell their produce.

Burundi is a stunning country. Farms and villages are slotted onto lush green hillsides, the burnt red soil of footpaths exposed under a wide blue sky. Since the end of conflict in 2006, Burundi’s transitional government has taken important steps to help families recover and set the country on good footing for human and economic development. Key to improving public health are the biannual Mother-Child Health Weeks.

Though field partner Food for the Hungry, Vitamin Angels has provided all of the vitamin A to be distributed to infants and children under age five during this year’s first Burundi Mother-Child Health Week, held June 7-9, 2010. Over two million children are to receive vitamin A in combination with deworming tablets – estimated to be around 90% of all children 6-59 months in Burundi. Mothers and women of child bearing age receive deworming tablets and tetanus immunizations.

Elizabet, 39, has arrived at a clinic in Musema District with her three daughters, Lea (2), Michelin (6), and Nshimururi (12). Lea is receiving both a high-dose vitamin A supplement and a deworming tablet. In a country where under-5 child mortality is 180 per 1,000 live births (the 10th highest in the world), a child that receives a dose of vitamin A is a child whose life may be saved by this essential immune-boosting micronutrient.

Families like Elizabet’s depend on subsistence agriculture. They farm and eat mainly cassava – a starchy root with few vitamins or minerals – plantains, sweet potatoes, and bananas. Nutrient-rich vegetables and fruits are beyond the means of many families, and are often sold for profit rather than given to children and mothers to eat. 

Elizabet heard about the Mother-Child Health Week on the radio and through the volunteer community health promoter in her village. She and her children have traveled together with the other members of her village. Elizabet says that she knows that the interventions given will help give her and her children better health, and will help to address some of the main problems faced by her family including malaria, parasites and diarrhea. Elizabet is grateful for the campaign and vows to bring her daughters back during the next event in December.

See photos from the trip >>