When drought and famine hit Kitui County two years ago, 31-year-old Purity Kindile in Imale village in Kitui East was highly malnourished and heavily pregnant.

She was living with her aged mother and her son who was also malnourished, surviving on porridge that they would occasionally cook after days of hunger and near starvation.

Their future was bleak and even when Community Health Promoters visited their home and advised them to eat well, there was absolutely nothing to eat.

“The crops in the field failed and I was too emaciated to do any menial jobs. Sometimes, we would get food from generous neighbours. The Community Health Promoter took us to Imale Dispensary and we were immediately put under management to save my son and the unborn child,” she narrates.

A stone’s throw away from Kindile’s home is Elizabeth Musyoka whose 4-year-old son was highly malnourished. This was identified during a mass screening exercise at Kinakoni Health Centre where they were immediately put under management.

For 20-year-old Elizabeth Syanzi Mukunga, it was a pre-natal clinic visit to a health centre that saved her life. She was informed she had a severe case of anaemia. 

Six sub-counties out of the eight in Kitui were worst hit by malnutrition including Mwingi North, Mwingi Central, Kitui East, Kitui South, Kitui Rural and some parts of Kitui Central.

According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022, stunting in Kitui has reduced from 46 per cent to 25.1 per cent which is equivalent to 34,304 children with a moderate malnutrition situation of 0.3 per cent which is 6,697 cases of low birth weight and 18,997 children being underweight annually.

According to Lydia Betty the Kitui County Nutrition Coordinator, this has been realised because the county government has been working with different partners such as World Vision and UNICEF in interventions to lower malnutrition and stunting levels through programmes such as NICHE and cash transfers.

One such programme is the Kenya Integrated Emergency Response Project under World Vision in partnership with USAID which has been giving cash transfers to 2973 people, each receiving Ksh 11,200 every two months for two years since July 2022.

According to Musavani area Chief Joshua Ngundi, the participants in the project were identified by the communities through public participation and mass screening in health facilities.

“We called for barazas and the community members themselves were able to identify families that were worst hit by poverty to be put under the programme,” he explains.

Martha Mwendwa from the same village used the money she received to buy chickens, goats and seeds she used to plant in the last rainy season.

“My life has changed. My children are slowly improving and although they never used to go to school due to weakness and stunting, now they can comfortably sit in a class and learn with the others,” she said. “I now feel like a salaried person because I feed my family with the eggs I get from my hens and milk from the goats and when I need to supplement that, I sell the hens and buy what I need.”

Further, the World Vision Kitui Project Manager Mutiso Kioko explains that the county government provided a guideline for the sub-counties that were hardest hit and help was apportioned to the most vulnerable who received nutrition screening and sensitisation and the cash transfers.

This concerted effort saw the training of 466 community health promoters to handle the malnourished families, one being Ndunge John in Kasaala village in Kitui South.

“We have been trained to identify the available resources to maintain proper nutrition because we have realized we can still find the required food groups within our locality,” she says.

They have been training pregnant and lactating mothers on the right food groups and following up on the children with malnutrition including training their mothers on the right use of Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) tapes to track their progress.

“Although the project is coming to an end, the county government will make follow-ups to ensure the interventions are sustained by the county government. We welcome other partners to come in and continue with the good work that has already started,” says Redemta Mary, the County Director of Special Programs in the Office of the Governor responsible for resource mobilization, donor linkages and strategic partnerships.