Swollen bellies, orange hair, listlessness and dull eyes — these are the traits of child malnutrition in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and where roughly one of every three children is chronically malnourished.
To try to change that statistic, Patricia B. Wolff, M.D., associate clinical professor of pediatrics, founded Meds & Food for Kids (MFK) in 2004, after she saw that medications and small amounts of local staples — rice, beans and corn — weren’t enough to nourish the children back to health.
MFK works to combat childhood malnutrition and related diseases in Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second-largest city, by giving Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a nutrient-rich mixture of peanuts, sugar, oil, vitamins, minerals and powdered milk, to children between 6 months and 5 years old with medically diagnosed malnutrition.
The mixture, known to Haitians as “Medika Mamba,” is distributed in plastic containers for families to feed their children at home.
To give that work a boost, MFK recently received $25,000 from the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition sponsored by the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Olin School of Business and the St. Louis-based YouthBridge Association.
After evaluation and treatment with the peanut-butter mixture, children start to show visible signs of improvement in 1-2 weeks, becoming more active and growing black hair. One course of the six-week treatment, which can be enough to renourish the child, costs under $100.
MFK primarily targets toddlers — a critical stage of development. Typically, the youngest child in a family is breastfed and older children scavenge and fight for food, leaving the hungry, weak toddlers unable to find food on their own or compete with older siblings.
Mothers are often too busy planting or selling crops to ensure the toddler is fed. But following a full course of treatment with RUTF, children have more energy and are able to maintain their health and weight on the standard Haitian diet.
“If we dig the children out of the deep immunologic and nutritional hole they are in, they are not very likely to fall back in,” Wolff said. “We can’t treat all of the congenital diseases they have, but we can treat malnutrition, which makes the kids healthier, smarter and able to contribute to society.”
The program stems from one started in 2001 by Mark J. Manary, M.D., professor of pediatrics. Manary’s Project Peanut Butter, which uses the same nutrient-rich mixture also known by its brand name Plumpy’Nut, fed 1,000 children in Malawi in the first two years, and continues to nourish thousands of starving children in the southeastern African country.
In Cap Haitien, local employees produce the mixture using primarily Haitian products in a facility that MFK has already outgrown. The organization is treating more than 120 children, which requires 4,400 pounds of Medika Mamba a month. By the end of this year, the group wants to produce more than 6,600 pounds a month and expand its distribution network to reach more malnourished children.
The organization’s long-term goals were presented to the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition in a five-year business plan drafted by three WUSTL students: Tom Stehl, who is working toward dual master’s degrees in business administration (M.B.A.) and social work; and Cynthia Wachtel and Scott Elsworth, both M.B.A. students.
Stehl has been involved with MFK for about a year and has visited Haiti three times this year to work with the project. He recruited Wachtel and Elsworth to help draft the business plan through a course in the Olin School of Business, known as the Hatchery, in which M.B.A. students develop professional-quality business plans for early-stage companies. The trio was awarded $5,000 from the competition.
Stehl spent two months in Cap Haitien this summer applying his business skills and networking with organizations on ways to make MFK most efficient. He said contributing his time and energy to a cause like MFK that achieves tangible results is the only way he can imagine spending his career.
“Medika Mamba saves children’s lives — period,” he said. “The kids to whom we distribute our Mamba are vulnerable, innocent and in desperate need of assistance. For them it’s truly a matter of life or death.”
Wolff spends about half of her time in Haiti, where she has volunteered since 1988 treating diseases all but absent in the United States — malaria, typhoid and parasite infestation. Vaccinations, nutritional information, food-preparation techniques and AIDS prevention are also part of the MFK program.
“Per the effort expended, the rewards are great,” Wolff said. “And that reward is addictive.”