Pregnant women and lactating mothers in East Africa need urgent assistance to avert the high rate of malnutrition among women and children in the region, according to an international humanitarian group responding to the ongoing crisis there.
CARE International estimated that 360,000 of the more than 12 million people in need of humanitarian aid in the Horn of Africa are pregnant women. The organization said it is cheaper to prevent malnutrition in its early stages than launch an emergency response to reverse it.
“Preventing malnutrition is much cheaper than scaling up emergency response,” Barbara Jackson, the organization’s humanitarian director said in a statement. “Focused efforts to restore the nutritional status of pregnant and lactating women and support women to successfully breastfeed their children are life-saving interventions we must not neglect during emergencies.”
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