Social Issue

The child malnutrition rate in Haiti is alarming. In addition to being the Latin American country with the highest number of deaths of children under the age of five, in the recent history of the country, a terrible 10% of children have died due to malnutrition. More than half of the infant deaths are related to the lack of adequate food and the lack of medical and nutritional assistance. In Haiti, food insecurity reaches 40% of the Haitian homes, 65% of the children suffer anaemia, and 32% present delays in their development (data from UNESCO 2004).

Our Response

The project of medical-nutritional recovery of children at the St. Damien pediatric hospital helps to combat the alarming rate of malnutrition among the child population in Haiti, where one in ten children dies from this cause.

Managed by NPH’s local partner in Haiti, NPFS, St. Damien Hospital provides high-quality medical and hospital treatment to 90,000 sick and vulnerable Haitian children each year.

Children suffering exclusively from malnutrition are treated in the malnutrition unit of St. Damien Hospital, which is the only one in Haiti that has a specific nutrition care unit (NCU) to treat this problem. An average of 400 critically malnourished children are treated each year, with a mortality rate of less than 15%.

The duration of the nutritional recovery program varies depending on the degree of malnutrition of the patient, but usually includes approximately six weeks of hospitalisation. However, the most severe cases of malnutrition may require two to three months of hospitalisation, and are often extremely difficult to treat. Once this phase is over, the children who have been discharged are monitored on an outpatient basis through weekly consultations in order to follow up their progress in an external malnutrition clinic, the Kay O’Bois, located next to the hospital.

Expected Social Impact

97 Haitian neonates and children in poor health due to malnutrition have benefited from the project.