As the world moves to fight the unprecedented COVID-19
pandemic, thousands of children in Africa are going hungry as a locust plague destroys
crops.
Swarms of desert locusts have been wreaking havoc on tens of
thousands of hectares of farmland and pastures in Kenya, since arriving from
Somalia and Ethiopia in December 2019.
It is the largest locust invasion in Kenya in 25 years.
Farming families have been left devastated, struggling to feed their children
and earn a living.
Five-year-old Mary, who lives in a disadvantaged community in Samburu County, says she is hungry “most of the time” because of the plague.
Since the locust invasion the lunchtime meals served at her school are no longer enough to keep her full throughout the day. Teachers and school co-ordinators have been forced to reduce the size of lunches because of fears of further food shortages as a result of the swarms of locusts destroying farmland.
Goat’s milk, a highly nutritious drink for children, has also become scarce in schools, increasing the risk of young students like Mary becoming malnourished.
At home, Mary’s situation is no better. Her parents rely on the sale of aloe vera plants to feed their five children and ensure they can go to school.
But the locust plague in recent months has destroyed their aloe vera crops, says Mary’s father Paul.
“With aloe vera we would be able to make US$1 daily and use it to buy some food for the children, but now we have nothing,” Paul says. “Life is really tough.”
Daniel was 13 years old, had lost half his body weight and could not go to school as he battled a hard-to-detect form of tuberculosis for six months.
His mother Olive, ChildFund Papua New Guinea’s Head of Health Programs, was worried whether he would survive. For a long time, she did not know it was tuberculosis.
“He just lost a lot of weight,” Olive said. “You wouldn’t think it was him. And many of his friends couldn’t recognise him. He couldn’t go to school because of his sickness and he was not the normal active boy he was.
“I think it was really hard for him in terms of his education and it was hard for me and my family to Daniel did not show the most common symptoms of tuberculosis, such as a persistent cough or shortness of breath. This made it hard for Olive to get a diagnosis for her son’s ongoing health issues.“First, he started complaining about having constant abdominal pains and then he started gradually losing weight,” she said.
“Because he was a child I was treating him for worms. I thought that was causing it.”
Tuberculosis is treatable and preventable, but it still the leading cause of infectious death worldwide. Although the disease has been all-but eradicated in most rich countries it continuous to wreak havoc in many of the world’s poorest countries.
A reason the disease does so much damage is that many forms of tuberculosis are difficult to detect and can cause serious effects before being treated.
Olive (pictured below) has studied public health and is a qualified health extension officer. At the time Daniel got sick, she was working on a malaria project. Throughout her career she has seen children battling many diseases, but even she was stumped by the cause of her son’s illness.
As Daniel’s condition worsened, she began to suspect he had tuberculosis. She had him do a test in Port Moresby, but they never got the results. A doctor prescribed him antibiotics but his condition continued to deteriorate.
“I asked the doctor to have a look at him and then she was trying to prescribe the same drugs again so I was not happy,” Olive said.
“I asked her if there was any other treatment or if there’s any other examinations they could do. She wasn’t in favour of what I was suggesting and we had a bit of disagreement. So I asked her if he could go for a scan: a chest X-ray or abdominal X-ray.
“On that same day that I requested the ultrasound scan it was discovered that he had abdominal tuberculosis.”
Like most tuberculosis patients, Daniel noticed an improvement as soon as he started treatment. If tuberculosis had not been confirmed, his fate could have been much worse.
Between 2008 and 2018, more than 58 million lives were savedthrough tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment, but the disease still kills more than 1 million people each year because they cannot get diagnosed and treated.
Children can be particularly tough to treat and diagnose. Papua New Guinea has one of the world’s highest rates of tuberculosis making children particularly vulnerable.
Daniel (right) and Olive’s other children, Adrian and Rachael are now happy and healthy
As someone with a health education and full-time employment, Olive had the knowledge and resources to save her son. However this is not the case for many parents in Papua New Guinea. Her son is now a healthy 24-year-old but his battle with tuberculosis has had a lasting impact on his mother.
She also oversees teams of village health volunteersand tuberculosis treatment supporters who ensure patients follow their treatment plans to stop the spread of drug-resistant strainsof the disease.
ChildFund’s health programs are helping put an end to tuberculosis in PNG.
“Being a health worker, I knew about tuberculosis,” Olive said. “I learned about it when I was back at school but the personal experience I had gave me the passion to do more work in this area. So when I had the opportunity I just went for it and I committed all my time trying to do tuberculosis treatment and prevention work.
“You could see a child or someone being cured from the work you do. If you do the work properly, people will not be infected, nor will their lives be affected.”
