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Switzerland grants 1.9 mln USD for tackling malnutrition in Rwanda

Xinhua, February 19, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has allocated 1.9 million U.S. dollars in grants to help fight malnutrition and provide food assistance to vulnerable people in Rwanda, the Switzerland Embassy said in a statement issued Wednesday in Kigali.

The allocation, which is a supplement to the 3 million U.S. dollars allocated to the WFP in 2010, will enhance the nutritional support component of various nutrition programmes for some 15,000 people comprising all pregnant women and children under five years living in two affected districts including Nyamagabe (South) na Rutsiro (West).

With this operation, over 800 tons of food aid will be provided to children and women at risk of malnutrition.

Malnutrition and food insecurity remain serious problems in Mauritania, a country experiencing a structural deficit in food production, the statememt said

This contribution actually targets the needs expressed by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Rwanda and, thanks to it, this will help 15,000 children, pregnant and breast-feeding women for three months through the intermediary of nutrition centres across the country, according to the same source.

According to investigation on malnutrition among children under- five carried out over the past few years in Rwanda, about 43 percent of children suffer from weight loss.

According to the Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA-December 2012) and the most latest Nutrition Survey conducted by the government in 2012, the prevalence of chronic malnutrition among children under five years of age is still high at 43 percent despite a significant improvement from 52 percent in 2009.

It is said that the northern and western areas of the country, bordering Lake Kivu and along the Congo Nile Crest, are the most affected areas, with rates of stunting at over 60 percent.

An estimated 85 percent of households in Rwanda cultivate land and rely on agriculture or livestock as their main, and often only, livelihood activity, according to Rwanda's 2012 Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis and Nutrition Survey.

But increasing demographic pressure has resulted in small, semi- subsistence, and increasingly fragmented farms with low returns for farmers. "Access to productive land is a problem. The smaller the plot they are cultivating, the more likely they are to have a low food consumption score," adds the report. Endi