Empowering Women to Fight Malnutrition in Burkina Faso

We are partnering with Djantoli for a second project, a home-based monitoring service aimed at preventing, detecting, and treating malnutrition among under-fives living in the outskirts of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Why Burkina Faso?

Burkina Faso is ranked 9th among the countries with the worst child mortality ratio with 129 deaths out of 1000 children before age 5. Sixty percent of these deaths are due to benign infectious diseases. Malnutrition is an underlying cause or an exacerbating factor of the great majority of these deaths. People living in the suburbs of Ouagadougou, the capital city, are more and more vulnerable when it comes to health problems because of the growing impoverishment of households in these areas and uncontrolled urbanization.

In poor urban and sub-urban areas of Ouagadougou where Djantoli works, 15% of children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Often an invisible disease, chronic malnutrition has dramatic consequences on the physical and mental development capacities of children. However, malnutrition screening programs and educational activities related to nutrition are not rolled out by the national authorities in urban areas.

ODW + Djantoli

Djantoli means “watching over” in dioula, a local dialect spoken in West Africa. Their mission is to help mothers watch over the health of their family and especially their children. They work in impoverished areas where malnutrition has a high prevalence.

This project pursues 3 specific objectives:

1. Improving education and practice of 1,500 families living in Ouaga suburbs (around 6,000 children impacted) through participatory educational activities using collective games and personalized counseling activities.
2. Improving the proactive screening of acute malnutrition among families living in these areas as well as the treatment and monitoring of malnourished children, in coordination with local healthcare structures and grassroots community organizations.
3. Capitalizing on sharing their methods and results with the National Health Authorities to engage them in taking into account the specific issues affecting those areas.

The project will target families who voluntarily subscribe to the Djantoli service, participate in health education sessions or are reached by Djantoli’s malnutrition screening campaigns.

Join us as we partner to empower women to fight malnutrition in Burkina Faso. Your gift to this campaign will help 1,500 families improve their nutritional practices and screen 2,000 children for malnutrition who will be referred for treatment when needed.