IRIN News

"The majority of Liberian children are fed a uniform diet of rice mixed with sauce and a smattering of vegetables, according to nutrition specialist Cherie Fulk with NGO Action Contre La Faim. 'Fruit and vegetables are not highly valued among many communities – rice is the thing,' she said."

"Action Contre la Faim (ACF), an NGO supporting therapeutic feeding centres for malnourished children in the capital, Monrovia, said 45 percent of children who died before reaching the age of five were underweight."

"ACF staff regularly hear widespread beliefs about breastfeeding perils: It is dangerous to breastfeed while pregnant as it could weaken the unborn infant; women should not breastfeed if a previous child has died while breastfeeding; and breastfeeding over time is dangerous as breast milk can mix with blood."

“'The high levels of acutely malnourished [children] are partly a hangover from the war,' said James Fireman, manager of the Action Contre la faim (ACF)-supported outpatient feeding centre for children in Pipeline, a northern Monrovia suburb."

“The possibility of water shortages in the coming dry season has been reduced to the barest minimum,” Morie Amadu, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) adviser for the Nargis response programme with Action against Hunger (ACF) in Myanmar, echoed.

"As an example of how the new system catches at-risk children earlier, Marie-Sophie Whitney, Action Against Hunger (ACF) senior nutrition adviser, noted that a six-month-old boy measuring 65cm and weighing less than 5.7kg would be considered severely acutely malnourished under the new standards, whereas under the 1977 National Centre for Health Statistics (NCHS) system, based on bottle-fed Caucasian children from the Midwest USA, the level would be 4.9kg."

"...Anne Garella, head of the Action Contre la Faim (ACF) country mission, told IRIN they had applied to build toilets and water points for the Qambar IDPs but had failed to get permission from the government."

"International aid institutions like Oxfam, Action Contre la Faim (ACF) and CARE continue to deliver containers of drinking water to residents in affected areas, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)."

"...ACF is delivering clean, fresh water to nine villages in Bogale Township. With the help of ACF, the inhabitants of these villages, who had to purchase fresh water from water vendors prior to the cyclone, now have a good supply of potable water. ..."

"...The issue of how to ensure that remote communities have access to transportation and other services to achieve adequate standards of living has often resulted in controversial resettlement schemes*. Now the Lao government is collaborating with the international NGO, Action Contre la Faim, and the European Commission, to offer an alternative. ..."