With a population of under 7 million people, much of Laos is sparsely populated, and visiting our project locations in the remote north east involved a local flight to the provincial capital, followed by a 3-hour drive to the northeast border.
The roads vary in quality, but even on the main highway, you can’t drive more than 40 – 50km/hr. It takes time to get to the communities as ChildFund Laos works in the most remote, marginalised and in-need populations.
I’m here to review our nutrition programing in the province.
Despite suffering incredibly high levels of stunting (a chronic form of malnutrition that affects both physical and mental development), Laos possesses very few nutrition experts – in fact, there are no tertiary level courses for people to even be trained – that’s why I have been called in to advise on the current strategy.
This project works in two districts about 50km apart, and covers over 20 villages.
We are focusing on rural and remote areas where access to services and health education is particularly challenging. In these areas, over half of the children are stunted; a product of poverty, lack of health and nutrition knowledge, and culturally ingrained food habits. A number of local food taboos mean that women often eat only sticky rice in late pregnancy and early post-partum.
It’s a diet that starts depriving the developing foetus from necessary vitamins and minerals for growth even before birth. In some cases, mothers feed masticated sticky rice to newborns, in the tragic misbelief that it is better than breastmilk.
We are combating these habits by training local people to become health volunteers. We teach them how to monitor children’s growth, and to lead nutrition education sessions for mothers and children.
One of the biggest challenges Grade 1 teachers in Australia face is keep up with the energy levels of their young students.
At Nammen Primary School in northern Laos, Grade 1 teacher Pim has the opposite problem.
Her students often come to school lethargic. Their young minds aren’t buzzing with enthusiasm. Instead, they are distracted by stomach pains and headaches.
Laos has some of the highest rates of child malnutrition in Asia. In many remote villages like Pim’s over half of all children are chronically malnourished and over a third are underweight.
Pim, who has been teaching at the government school for 13 years, sees firsthand the effect this has on children.
“My students often come to school hungry and when they are hungry they cannot concentrate, it is very hard to teach them,” she says.
Malnutrition locks children into a cycle of poverty.
When a child doesn’t get the food they need, their growth can become stunted, making them more vulnerable to disease.
Without proper nutrition, a child’s brain may not develop to its full cognitive ability. When children are repeatedly ill, their body can struggle to retain the nutrients of an already meager daily diet.
Repeated illnesses can affect their families, who may have to miss work or school to look after the child and spend more of their limited resources and income on medical care.
The majority of children who are stunted come from families living in poverty and who already under considerable financial stress.
Nutrition-related factors accounted for about 45% of all deaths of children under five in 2016. In Laos, every year more than 6,000 children die due to illnesses related to malnutrition.
For every undernourished child who survives, countless more are permanently affected. When stunted children become adults they can expect to earn 20% less than adults who were not stunted as children.
Thaimoua Yongvang, ChildFund Laos’ provincial area manager for the region that covers Nammen village, says this is one of the region’s biggest problems.
