Baby Health & Nutrition Center
Greetings from our Health & Nutrition Center! We continue to serve a new crop of hundreds of orphaned babies and children. All receive life-saving milk, nutritional support and basic health monitoring. Each one experiences the love of the Father by our dedicated staff. This year, we have been blessed with six new workers!
We continue looking for and implementing new ways to improve the quality of life while sharing the love of God to both the children and their caregivers. We want everyone experience “life abundant” through Jesus Christ.
Why a nutrition program? The most frequent cause of death among newborns here is starvation. Infants are always the most vulnerable. They are birthed in appalling conditions: on dirt floors in mud in thatched huts, under trees in the forest or in the fields. Their mothers are their only source of milk, but many moms die. This leaves orphaned infants with no other means of survival. The Nutrition Program provides the adopting caregivers with milk, primary care, training and support. This program has saved over 9,000 babies from certain death.
Some of these caregivers are elderly grandmothers. Some are 12-year-old sisters who are now the head of a parentless household of children. Some are frantic fathers who are full of fear as they grieve the loss of their wives and struggle to care for a newborn, all while trying to hoe their fields by hand. Our team of nurses lock arms with these brave caregivers and join them in their fight to save their babies. We provide nutritional, emotional, and social support by advocating for the patient in the hospitals for necessary testing and treatment. We pray with and encourage families with the hope of Christ and His love. We have the privilege of journeying with the children and their families for an average of two years. Children with physical disabilities or other special needs remain on the program for extended assistance.
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And for those children with special needs (73 of them so far), we minister and provide them with a safe environment to be heard, seen, and prayed for while providing sensory stimulation to improve their quality of life.
The Health Program works side by side with the Nutrition Program to provide essential care to both the babies and their care-givers. We live in a hot, wet, tropical region where diseases are endemic. Malaria, tuberculosis and infections of every kind run rampant, especially in a malnourished population with little or no access to basic health care. For patients with serious illnesses, we refer them to the hospital in the city. We often escort the patients to the hospital and advocate for the patients to receive necessary tests and treatments. If they are admitted, we provide bed-side support. Once discharged, we do home-visits to provide ongoing support, counsel, training and encouragement to the patients, their families, and their local communities. We also engage the local churches for assistance. This year we also added CHAD (Community Health and Discipleship) Program, which focuses on bringing public health and bio-sand water filtration into the villages.
This is a big team effort and you’re a part of that team! A thousand thanks for your prayers and support.
"Bear fruit that remains."
~ tracy
