Just before the Christmas break, I visited Bontanga and I could not help but marvel at how God has used these two evangelists to transform the lives of children, women and entire communities.

Under the project, the founders have succeeded in establishing an educational complex that provides quality education, at virtually no cost, to children from the communities, some of who walk or ride from villages more than five miles away.

“We pay GH¢10 at the beginning of each term. We are very happy that our children are also receiving quality education and we pray that God supports pastor and his wife,” Alhassan Adam, a farmer who is the father of a nursery-three pupil, Nuhu Alhassan, said.

In 2005, the couple succeeded in fulfilling another vision of theirs by establishing a medical centre to address the health needs of the people and reduce the incidence of death resulting from malaria, cholera and labour-related complications.

“We realised that a number of children were dying from preventable and treatable conditions such as malaria and we felt the need to do something about it,” Rev Owusu-Sekyere said in an interview.

He said they also found out that two-thirds of the people in the communities did not have clean water and sanitation services and so the couple went a step further to drill boreholes and construct household latrines in a number of communities, with funding support from the international donors.

Care for malnourished children

Among the services that King's Village offers, the one that touched me most was the provision of paediatric care and long-term rehabilitation for children suffering from severe malnourishment.

When they saw that some children brought to the medical centre were at the point of death as a result of malnourishment, Mr and Mrs Owusu-Sekyere were inspired to set up a special unit to breathe new life into these children.

With funds from two of their volunteers from Nottingham, Mr and Mrs Terry Carpenter, a nutrition centre was established less than 100 metres away from the medical centre.

When I got to centre, I was moved by the sight of a skeletal boy sitting on the lap of his mother.

I must confess that I had never seen a more severely malnourished child physically, except those I see on television from places such as Somalia.

The boy, Misbawu Mohammed, looked so skinny, frail and dehydrated, with his eyes sunk into the skull and his ribs protruding on his sides.

His mother, 30-year-old Hadija Abu, said her son, who was over two years, became sick a year after birth but they could not tell what was wrong with him.

“It started with high temperature and later he developed skin rashes all over his body. Later, he lost appetite and his situation went from bad to worse until we came here,” she said.

Sitting next to them was another young mother, Awabu Mahamudu, and her emaciated four-year-old daughter, Amina Issah.

“She has been sick since birth and in spite of all that we did, her condition never improved,” 36-year-old Awabu said.

Both mothers, however, maintained that the health of their children had begun to improve since they arrived at the centre a few weeks back.

“They were worse than what you are seeing. Now they eat better and are gaining weight,” Hadija said.

The Nutrition Officer in charge of the centre, Mr Norma Abudu Birresborn, said children brought to the centre mostly suffered from three main conditions: kwashiorkor, marasmus and marasmus kwashiorkor.

Those conditions, he explained, indicated low levels of protein and energy in the children, adding that children with those conditions were thin, had bloated stomachs, yellowish sparse hair, among others.

“When they arrive, they are usually in a precarious state and so the first thing we do is stabilise them, such as normalising their temperature and treating any infections,” Mr Birresborn indicated.

He said during the rehabilitation phase, the children were given medication, nutritious meals and some food supplements.

Attached to the nutrition centre is a traditional-style compound house with 10 rooms where children admitted there stay with their mothers or caregivers during the rehabilitation stage.

Inside the compound, I saw a middle-aged woman drying corn and pepper, while two healthy-looking children were playing ‘Catch me if you can’.

The woman, Mma Sakina Yakubu, told me that she was the caretaker of the two children, Fuseina and Alhassan, who are twins and that they had been brought to the centre in the early days of its operation but had now recovered successfully.

“Both of them are in Class Three in the school,” she said.

The bigger picture

Malnutrition remains one of the threats to the country's efforts at attaining the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) on reducing child mortality (goal four) and eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (goal one).

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), malnutrition occurs “when a person is not getting enough food” and that “even if people get enough to eat, they will become malnourished if the food they eat does not provide the proper amounts of micronutrients — vitamins and minerals — to meet daily nutritional requirements”.

The United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) claims that malnutrition is the largest single contributor to disease and that it also affects the mental and physical development of children.

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) recently painted a grim picture about the state of malnutrition among Ghanaian children when it revealed that 12,000 children in Ghana die every year of ailments resulting from malnutrition.

The Deputy Chief Nutrition Officer at the GHS, Mrs Esi Amoaful, who made this disclosure, further indicated that “one out of every 13 children in Ghana die before their fifth birthday mostly as a result of under-nutrition”,

She mentioned the Northern, Upper East, Central, Western and Eastern regions as the most affected regions.

The Northern Regional Director of Health, Dr Akwasi Twumasi, confirmed that the region had a high rate of malnutrition but indicated that cases of acute malnutrition had reduced from 21 per cent in 2011 to 18.3 per cent in 2012.

He attributed that downward trend to a number of interventions implemented by the GHS, in partnership with its development partners, such as the supply of supplementary drugs to children.

The Northern Region was one of the regions that benefited from the Nutrition and Malaria Control for Child Survival Project (NMCCSP), a five-year, World Bank-funded project that sought to strengthen community-based health and nutrition services for pregnant women and children under the age of two.

One unique component of the project, which spanned 2007-2012, was the promotion of indigenous meals prepared with ingredients such as moringa, beans, agushi, smoked fish and spinach.

The Programme Manager of that project, Mrs Hannah Adjei, told the Daily Graphic that local foods contained the recommended combination of nutrients needed to support the growth of children.

Indeed, the King's Village Nutrition Centre, as part of its services, trains caregivers on how to prepare nutritious local meals for their children, particularly those affected by malnutrition.

“We train them in the preparation of ‘winimix’, which is made from corn, soya bean, groundnut and millet,” she stated.

One thing that remains significant is that the King’s Village Nutrition Centre is as important to the deprived villages of Tolon and Kumbungu as water is to the people in the desert.

It can, however, continue to offer these life-saving services if it gets the needed partnership and funding support from the government, philanthropists and donor agencies.

Story by Nurudeen Salifu