In August 2012, RMF CNE Santosh Pall found Pooja, a 9 month old girl, in Devigarh village, with a MUAC of 7.9. Picture the circumference of your thumb: that was the size of her upper arm.
Pooja was immediately rushed to the closest Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) in the Thandla Hospital. There, she received the care that was required, and slowly began gaining weight. After 16 days in the NRC, she was released for home feeding.
The following blog was written by Dr. Arvind Virmani, an Indian economist, about malnutrition in India. The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of RMF, however they address many of the challenges our teams face in fighting malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh. The author can be reached via his website: https://sites.google.com/site/drarvindvirmani/
http://dravirmani.blogspot.in/2013/02/indias-problem-is-malnutrition-not-food.html
Eamen Hameed of healingPAQ interviews RMF CEO/Founder Dr. Martina Fuchs on her passion, vision, intention, experience, challenges, failures, successes, teachings, western and alternative medicine, service and approach in life.
By: Pratik Phadkule, Program Manager Health and Nutrition
Talking about periods of the human life span, what period do you think is the most difficult? Childhood? ‘Old Age’? Every period of human development comes with its own unique set of challenges and it is very difficult to classify which is the most challenging, but for our work in India, in the last month we decided to focus on adolescence, particularly in girls from our communities, because of the relationship between the challenges faced early in life compounding those faced later.
Not clear? Let me explain it to you.
RMF India Program Manager – Health and Nutrition Pratik Phadkule writes about his experience with CommCare and the challenges of treating Malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh.
Living in an age of extreme technological advancement certainly is a boon for mankind. This technological advancement has helped us in all the fields – communication, space travel, medicine, and engineering. Most importantly, with the help of this, our lives have become so much easier. I think, on this point, no one would disagree.
Village children in Madhya Pradesh
RMF India – May 2012
By Michael Matheke-Fischer, Director of Programs
Two and a half years ago, I realized I had a large challenge in front of me. In order to complete the first step of our program, a baseline survey in 500 villages to determine the exact malnutrition situation we were dealing with, I was going to have to get creative. Sitting in front of me at the New Delhi train station, in heat of well over 100 degrees, were 500 survey books, over 1 ton of paper. I had a train ticket, 50 new workers at a training over 600 miles from where I stood, and 12 hours to get there.
Two of our Community Nutrition Educators learning to use the Commcare mobile phone survey tool
Click on link to visit our website where Annual Report can be viewed and downloaded as a PDF document
http://www.realmedicinefoundation.org/initiative/update/annual-report-20102011
Photo: Dr. Martina C. Fuchs, RMF Founder/CEO, making new friends at the Lwala, Kenya Community Hospital, October 1, 2011
We are so grateful to all our friends, supporters and teams around the world and wish everyone a fantastic 2012!
Having wrapped up another successful we want to pause and say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who supported our work in 2011. You have helped us achieve so much, and we give our deep thanks to everyone for your generosity and support!
Sonu’s Story Continued
By Michael Matheke-Fischer, Director of Programs, RMF India
Sunday, November 20, 2011 was the first time I met Sonu. To me, he was a picture on a PowerPoint presentation, a picture that continues to shock me today. Sonu came into our program 15 months ago while I was in Delhi working on streamlining our administrative procedures and, more importantly, trying to raise more funds to help children like him. Fundraising and administrative work, while just as vital as the field work we engage in, is an ever present necessity shared by our small, but dedicated team.
Caitlin McQuilling told me about a case that had shocked even her. While sitting in Delhi, it was hard to hear the emotion in her voice. Days were spent monitoring his progress, coordinating with doctors, and attempting to diagnose exactly what was causing his dramatic wasting. All of this was terribly frustrating while sitting in meetings and pouring over budgets.
The team watched Sonu finally begin to improve, his weight gaining dramatically over three months until he was a healthy, even hefty, child. Continue reading