Tuesday, May 19, 2009

A life Saver Called "Plumpynut"

CBS aired this story a while ago but since the core of the story is the malnourished kids, I thought I would write about it.
You've probably never heard a good news story about malnutrition, but you’re about to. Every year, malnutrition kills five million children - that's one child every six seconds. But now, the Nobel Prize-winning relief group "Doctors Without Borders" says it finally has something that can save millions of these children.
What is it you say..... well it's cheap, easy to make, and even easier to use, as CNN's Anderson Cooper reports, it's a ready-to-eat, vitamin-enriched concoction called "Plumpynut," an unusual name for a food that may just be the most important advance ever to cure and prevent malnutrition.
"Now we have something. It is like an essential medicine. In three weeks, we can cure a kid that is looked like they're half dead. We can cure them just like an antibiotic. It’s just, boom! It's a spectacular response," Dr. Tectonidis says.

"It's the equivalent of penicillin, you’re saying?" Cooper asks.

"For these kids, for sure," the doctor says.

This miracle has saved countless lives and continues to save lives worldwide. It's better than powdered milk because it doesn't need clean water to mix it with and also convenient to mothers because they can administer it at home.
Plumpynut is a remarkably simple concoction: it is basically made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. It tastes like a peanut butter paste. It is very sweet, and because of that kids cannot get enough of it.
After reading that I could not believe there is a product and a cheap one as this one(less than $1) and still kids are starving. I also did some research and found out that an Ethiopian company produces these product with the help of a french company called Nutrise. So maybe we could give “Plumpynut” to the many malnourished kids in Ethiopia and witness the miracle.
for more on this subject CBS News

No comments:

Post a Comment