Collaboration shows how to successfully tackle health challenges
Save the Children South Africa, GlaxoSmithKline and the Free State and Limpopo health departments have teamed up to address malnutrition and stunting.
Save the Children SA’s nutrution and health programme. Picture: Supplied
A nongovernmental organisation, a global healthcare giant and two provincial health departments have become a model on how best to collaborate in addressing health challenges facing South Africa.
In what could be seen as a case study, Save the Children South Africa (SCSA), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the Free State and Limpopo health departments have teamed up to address malnutrition and stunting – among key causes of infant and child mortality rate.
According to Statistics SA 2016 child mortality figures, released earlier this year, newborn babies constituted 4.5% of registered deaths in South Africa. Children aged five to nine accounted for 0.6%, and those aged between 10 to 14 (0.7%).
Sue Jones, health and nutrition programme manager at Save the Children SA, said: “It is a three-year programme which ends in May next year. We would have wanted to expand it to reach other parts of the country.
“We have found that acute malnutrition is one of the causes of stunting and neonatal deaths in children. We are working very closely with GSK, the Thabo Mofutsanyane district [municipality] in the Free State and the Capricorn district in Limpopo. We believe that health and nutrition should be high on our agenda.
“With a statistic of 27% of stunted children under the age of three years, their brain development and education outcomes are surely affected.”
In terms of acute malnutrition case fatality rates, Limpopo has 8.3% and the Capricorn district 9.2%; Free State 9.6% and Thabo Mofutsanyane 11%, with South Africa standing at 8%.
The R19 million project, funded by GSK, is helping communities by building the capacity of more than 600 healthcare workers, improving access to essential health services for 22 500 children under the age of five and empowering 11 250 parents and primary caregivers in the two provinces.
Vasu Chetty, GSK medical affairs director, said: “GSK is proud to be able to support SCSA and the lifesaving initiatives that we’ve been able to drive together.”
SCSA chief executive Gugu Ndebele said: “We can already see the benefits for the people of Limpopo and Free State. SCSA is deeply invested in this project and we are aligned with our valued global partner – GSK.”
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