Nutrition program at Asayita refugee camp

In March 2010, the number of malnourished children in the nutrition program we ran at the Asayita health center began to rise. Ethiopia’s Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA), which ran the town’s refugee camp, took an interest in our work and asked us to extend it to the camp. Within a few days, it was agreed.

The camp, on the outskirts of Asayita, was home to Eritrean refugees of Afar ethnicity. At first, malnutrition reached 29%.

From emergency to follow-up

We started by screening more than 700 children, pregnant women and nursing mothers to find out who needed to join the program. With ARRA’s permission, we put up a small building inside the camp, where we followed up each patient and handed out food every week.

That same year, we went from an emergency to a maximum of 100 patients a month, most of them with moderate malnutrition. ARRA and UNHCR thanked us for our work.

Beyond food

In 2011, the year of the Horn of Africa food crisis, we included older people, who are often left out of these programs and who, as heads of household, shared their food with their children and grandchildren. We also began treating eye problems in the camp, transferred patients to the hospital when needed and helped with the water supply.

In 2012 we renewed the agreement with ARRA and were seeing an average of 130 patients a month, mainly children, pregnant women and nursing mothers. The program ended in April 2013, after three years, when the agreement was not renewed. We carried on treating malnutrition at Asayita hospital.