See how our teams work with communities in India and around the world.
Despite its status as an economic powerhouse, India has the largest number of malnourished children in the world. According to UNICEF, one in every three malnourished children lives in India. One of those children was Prahlad Ramesh, from Dhawati village in India’s Madya Pradesh state.
Prahlad lives in a rural area of India where tens of thousands of parents can’t care properly for their children because they must work to cultivate crops. Families also lack access to clean water and proper sanitation. These factors contribute to the area’s alarmingly high malnutrition rates.
Prahlad was severely malnourished: at almost two years old, he weighed less than 10 pounds. “Prahlad lost his strength,” his mother Rehka told us. “He could not even smile or play anymore.” Rehka tried everything she could to help him, including treating him with traditional remedies, but Prahlad kept getting weaker. Then, a community health worker told Rehka about a health center supported by Action Against Hunger where she could take Prahlad to get treatment.
At the health center, Prahlad was immediately diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition and given the treatment he needed to regain his strength, including therapeutic milk, which is specially formulated to help children recover from malnutrition.
Less than a month later, Prahlad had gained weight and was on the road to recovery. By the time he left the health center to return home, Prahlad was laughing again.
Prahlad was saved but there are many children in India and around the world that need your help. Every day more than 5,500 children — two million each year — still lose their lives to deadly hunger, even though it is predictable, preventable and treatable. Our expert teams can bring a young child from a medical crisis to full health in just 45 days.
We know how to provide lifesaving treatment to malnourished children but we need your help to do it. Make a gift today and you can save a young child’s life.
