Even before January 12, Haiti ranked as one of three countries in the world with the worst daily caloric deficits per inhabitant. One out of every four children in Haiti suffers from stunting, a sign of chronic hunger and malnutrition. Hunger also negatively affects the health and adherence to medications of many of our HIV and TB patients. Zanmi Agrikol (ZA)—“Partners In Agriculture” in Haitian Creole—was established in 2007 to help increase agricultural production, and play a leading role in PIH/ZL’s effort to stem the tide of hunger and malnutrition in Haiti.
The earthquake left hundreds of thousands of people without access to food. To meet immediate food needs, PIH/ZL established malnutrition clinics in each of the four settlements of internally displaced people where we are working, and distributed over 175,000 tons of food through the end of March.
An exodus of people directly impacted by the earthquake to rural areas where PIH/ZL works has increased the pressure on already fragile food production systems. Shortly after the earthquake, we successfully planted and harvested a fast-growing variety of corn to alleviate hunger among displaced families in the Central Plateau and Artibonite regions, and provided food assistance to vulnerable patients and their families, many of whom were struggling to provide food and shelter for relatives who had fled Port-au-Prince.
To transition from our emphasis on immediate food assistance to programs supporting sustained food security, ZA has already begun to dramatically scale up. For example, since January, PIH/ZL identified 1,000 extremely vulnerable families who are now being trained in innovative and effective agricultural techniques by ZA. To supplement our farm in Corporant, we have also purchased a hilly plot of land in Lashto in the Central Plateau, which will serve as a demonstration farm for families cultivating crops in similar mountainous areas. ZA will employ 100 new farmers in order to increase production of our ready-to-use therapeutic food, Nourimanba, which will be given to 7,500 children suffering from acute malnutrition over the next year.
This expansion of ZA by 20 to 25 percent will contribute significantly to improving the long-term food security and health of our patients and their families.
