Pan-African Conference 21 - 24 July 2002 Inter-Continental Hotel ...

Abstracts 10/22/02 11:27 AM Page 46
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health and nutrition.
As a result of this Mothers do not know the connection between balanced food
and health, cleanliness and health. Many mothers are bounded with
traditional beliefs and habits (food taboos), which can harm the health of
children and women.
There for to improve the nutritional status of mothers and children, we design,
print, produced posters and other educational materials and give Intensive
training to trainers for grassroots level. The program continues And the aim is
to reach as many mothers as possible and improve there Nutritional status.
Availability of Educational Materials
There is a great lack of up to date information for grassroots level trainers and
care- takers about the child's need for specific food and care, in general
knowledge about Nutrition is very poor. The insignificant assortment of
educational material, which is available, is either outdated, too expensive or
simply out of reach of the community.
Obviously health and nutrition teaching materials should be understandable
at basic level, available and affordable to all members of community,
especially to those with Low income. EECMY is running various development
programs in rural and urban Ethiopia, but it has not so far developed proper
nutrition and health educating materials Neither for trainers nor for the
community. In addition to this there is a need to compile the already prepared
educational materials and renew them with up to date information.
Justification
Co-operation with other organizations is essential to develop the material
required on health and nutrition for the implementation of their respective
programs, which focuses on awareness rising of people on health and
nutrition.
NB I will prepare further elaborated practices on food taboo and its effect on
health.
I have also true story on how beliefs and miss beliefs affect the health of
women and children in Ethiopia and the teaching methods used to address
this issues.
Ethiopia is located in east Africa, a tropical country with two major seasons,
summer and winter, mainly one harvesting season but in some low land areas
two harvesting seasons. The total population is 61,649,000(1999statistic
The causes for high mortality and morbidity among mothers and children>5
are various, but the majority are preventable. The existing health and nutrition
education must be Improved and expanded, which cannot be done with out
proper and up to date educational materials and training.
The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) is a local church
also registered as an NGO with total members of 3,359,683(in 2000) the church
is organized in 20 units located in different part of the country.
The Nutrition and Hygiene Project is located in EECMY central office under
the health section in DASSC (Development and Social Service Commission of
the central office.
Health and Nutritional status
In general basic health care is not at all satisfactory, large portion of the
population has no access to basic components of Primary Health Care
(Statistical figures are attached in Annex 1)
Health Practice
In Ethiopia the general pattern for meals in the family is that the men eat first
and most of the food, while the women and children will eat the remaining left
over. This means that the women and children will seldom have the daily
energy requirements covered.
(The average energy intake of the people meets only 73% of the requirements.)
Basic hygiene is poor. Using unclean water from rivers or ponds does almost
all food preparations. Toilets are rare. One of the leading reasons for death of
small children in diarrhea is foods or drinks from a contaminated source.
ABSTRACT NO. 246. THE INTEGRATED VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT
PROJECT
Gobezie Abeba
Ministry of Health, Ethiopia
I started with the theory that one could influence the dietary habit of a
community if one works with the families closely and involve them at every
stage so that they themselves make the food available with in the household.
With this in mind I looked for a village that is close to the office and my home
so that I would visit the village as often as possible. I located the village and I
did a quick survey to find out about the physical make up of the village such
July 2002, Vol. 15, No. 2 SAJCN (Supplement)
ABSTRACTS
as the population, the number of house holds, the schools and the student
population, the churches and their influence on the day to day living, clinic or
other health facilities, the local administration, the source of water and
hygienic. A detail health and nutrition survey was also done to investigate the
nutritional problems and the parasitic infestation.
All these studies showed that there was severe food shortage in the village.
Parasitic infestation was very high; there were seasonal fluctuation of food. A
high percentage of the population, both adult and children were severely and
moderately under weight.
I did not have enough resource to start the program with all the 700 HH. I had
enough money to start the program with 50 households. Priority was given to
families with children under five and families who are willing to worked hard
to improve their nutritional situation. I was allowed to employ a girl with a
high school education to work closely with the families and a development
worker. We met frequently with the families and we discussed the problems
that were revealed in the studies. Together we set strategies to control the
parasitic problems, and to curve the food shortage and to improve the
deficient diet. The priorities that were set were to build latrines, to have
vegetable and fruit gardens and to clean the surrounding to closely follow the
children under five years and pregnant and lactating women, to have
intensive nutrition education for all the family members with special emphasis
for the under fives, pregnant and lactating women.
We agreed with the clinic to have an open- door service. We identify children
who are not vaccinated, who are malnourished or who have any kind of
sickness and send them to the clinic. We also try to talk to women to tell as
soon as they know they are pregnant so that we follow them.
We organized a committee of all the development workers in the village, and
representatives of the local administration, the clinic, and the school. We had
monthly meetings with these groups.
The In put for the HH was three-farm implement (a small shovel, a pick and
water pail) In addition to save the environment we gave the families kerosene
stove cooker. The total cost for these equipments was US$ 22. There were two
workers and the girl who worked with families and the development worker.
The salary of these two workers was US$ 65. So the total cost for the whole for
the whole program was about US$ 85.
As a result of these, every HH was eating vegetables four to five times a week
and they used the latrines and kept them clean. The cleanliness of the
compound was superb. The result of the program was beyond expectation.
ABSTRACT NO. 251. DIETARY PLANNING FOR LOW INCOME STRATA
IN EGYPT
El-Asfahani A 1 ,Abdou Amin I 2 , Ibrahim Khalid R 3
1 Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Sultanat of Oman
2 National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt
3 Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt
Mostly caused by economic limitations, even the average income level strata
in Egypt suffer nutritional deficiency, despite spending more than half of their
income on food. As such, the study reached a number of alternative daily
diets, for winter and summer, satisfying nutritional daily requirements at the
least cost, sharing no more than 43 percent of income for the average lowincome
typical Egyptian family. Most of the proposed diet models consisted of
bread, molasses, and deep green leafy vegetables. Some animal origin foods
were included in some of the proposed diet models for reasons of food
variations. To ensure future validity, price stability conditions as weighted by
the foregoing inflation rate were considered in minimized cost diet model
selection.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST: none.
ABSTRACT NO. 301. Use of dried and preserved bovine blood for the
fortification of bean sauce as a food-based strategy to combat iron
deficiency anaemia in Uganda
Kikafunda Joyce K, Paul Sserumaga
Department of Food Science, Makerere University, P.O. Box 7062 Kampala, Uganda.
E-mail: foodtech@infocom.co.ug
Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is one of the most important micro-nutrient
deficiency diseases in many developing countries. In Uganda, it is estimated
that over 50% of women of child bearing age and children below 5 years of age
suffer from iron-deficiency anaemia. Although there are several strategies to