Eliya is six months old. Two weeks ago, he was brought to the hospital in Ntamugenga on the brink of starvation after his mother grew concerned about his progressing weight loss. She didn’t have the means to provide enough food and could only afford to eat one meal a day. When his condition deteriorated, she knew she wouldn’t be able to help him on her own and had to seek help. This led her to Ntamugenga where Eliya was admitted to the pediatric ward. He still has a long road to recovery but we will do everything we can to nurse him back to health. We will also equip his mother with the knowledge and resources to make sure he never goes hungry again.

Hunger is the most deadly of all diseases and paradoxically the most preventable – the cure is simply providing the body with essential nutrients. According to the FAO, a UN organization specialized in fighting hunger, 1.3 billion tonnes of food ends up in the trash every year – one third of food intended for consumption. COVID-19, for which there is still no effective treatment, has taken the lives of an average of 7,500 people worldwide every day since the WHO declared the pandemic. By comparison, every day 25,000 people (10,000 of them children) die from hunger. That’s more than three times as many! These deaths don’t make headlines. The topic of hunger is of less and less interest to the people not affected by it.

The future is a luxury available only to those who have enough to eat. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, almost 16 million people, most of them young children, can only dream of such a luxury. Today, we are fulfilling Eliya’s mother’s biggest wish of returning home with a healthy and strong son.  Two weeks of therapy in Ntamugenga brought a huge change but there are many more children waiting for our help. We must do something for them!

Visit GoodWorks24 and help us feed a hungry child today!