Plumpynut

Not sure if everyone has heard about Plumpynut yet but I thought it deserved a blog post. My mother sent me this CBS News article last week and I was fascinated. CNN’s Anderson Cooper first reported this on 60 Minutes.

What is Plumpynut? Well, it might just be the thing that saves the millions of children suffering from malnutrition across the world. Created by Doctors Without Borders, Plumpynut is a cheap, ready-to-eat, vitamin-enriched creation.

Malnutrition kills five million children annually, which is one child every six seconds. And malnutrition is most seen throughout the developing world. Children are deprived of the necessary vitamins and minerals because their parents are too poor to purchase milk and nutritious food. And people living on less than $1 a day can’t afford electricity and thus they can’t store anything because there is no refrigeration—not to mention no access to clean water.

However, Plumpynut can get around those hurdles.

Plumpynut is made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and lots of vitamins and minerals. And the best part—kids love it because it’s sweet and takes like peanut butter.

This life-saving concoction doesn’t need water, cooking or refrigeration. It simply needs to be squeezed out of its container and given to a severe malnourished child. Each serving of Plumpynut is the equivalent of a glass of milk and a multivitamin. And Plumpynut works pretty fast. A severely malnourished child that looks like they are on the brink of death can be cured in about three weeks.

Unfortunately, malnutrition and HIV usually run hand in hand. Malnutrition worsens a child’s HIV while at the same time a child’s HIV worsens their malnutrition. Nutrition is so critical for a child that is HIV positive but for millions of children in the developing world, it’s something that is unattainable or something that comes too late. You see when a child reaches a certain point in their malnutrition, it’s hard to turn back. Even if a child is getting nutritious food, there comes a point where a child will lose the ability to digest food properly because it’s just too late. However, Plumpynut might be the thing that gives these children a second chance.

It could have been the thing that gave Ken or Margaret a second chance.

Ken was abandoned by his family last year in Nairobi’s Kenyatta National Hospital. Ken was not only HIV positive but severely malnourished—so malnourished that he wasn’t able to digest food properly. He was referred to Nyumbani and came to live there in January of this year. As much as the Nyumbani staff did everything possible to rehabilitate him—antiretroviral drugs, nutritious food, love and support—his system had just been too compromised. The effect over the years of malnourishment combined with his HIV positive status killed him. At 12 years old, he was 23 pounds when he died this past September.

Margaret came to Nyumbani sadly to die. She was 11 years old and only weighed 25 pounds. Both of her parents died after battling AIDS, and Margaret was left to be cared for by her two aunts. She lived with one of her aunts and spent the days with her other aunt. The aunt she lived with abused her. While the aunt she spent the days with didn’t abuse her, her uncle would not allow her to live in his house. Since neither of her aunts would commit to administering the antiretroviral drugs for Margaret, she could not go on the life-saving drugs. She came to Nyumbani abused, broken, near death and severely malnourished. Susan Gold, the woman who is a Fulbright scholar at Nyumbani, told me it was difficult for her to find a place on Margaret’s body where an injection could go in because she was mostly just skin and bones. The night before Margaret died, she looked at Susan and said “Everyone has left me”. And that was the last words she ever spoke. She died the next day.

Susan said she was so angry when Margaret died because Margaret's last words had so much truth to them.

“It’s like she's right. Her family left her, her country left her, and the world left her. Everyone left her and she’s an 11 year-old child! I will never understand that—how a world, a country and families will do that to a child. Where is President Kibaki and why is he not saying we don’t do that to our children, we take care of our own, this is not allowed, there is no reason for it. And it’s being done everyday and I will never understand that,” Susan said.

We’ll never know for sure but Plumpynut could have helped Ken and Margaret. Maybe not indefinitely but it may have given them another week, another month or another year.

Sister Mary, the director of Nyumbani, said she recently signed an agreement with Concern International, a non-governmental organization that aims to reduce poverty in the world’s poorest countries. Now, Nyumbani will have access to Plumpynut. Hopefully, it will benefit the many malnourished children the Nyumbani staff come into contact with in their many community-outreach programs in places like Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa.

Doctors Without Borders is asking for more of this type of food so they can save more children's lives. If the U.S. and the EU would spend some of their food aid on this, more companies would start making Plumpynut allowing more children to have access to this life-saving concoction.

To read more about Plumpynut, go to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/19/60minutes/main3386661_page3.shtml