In 2021, UN agencies sounded the alarm following three consecutive years of severe drought in Angola, and forecast that soaring food prices, combined with poor harvests, could have an impact on child malnutrition, particularly in southern provinces. In preparation, MSF carried out assessments and started medical activities in several areas in 2022. 

We worked in close collaboration with the health authorities, as well as with local communities, to open a project aimed at reducing child deaths and strengthening the existing healthcare system, particularly paediatric services, in the western province of Benguela. Through this project, we improved the early detection of malnutrition in children in the community, increased access to health facilities by organising referrals, and provided much-needed treatment and medical equipment.

As well as supporting San Pedro hospital’s malnutrition intensive care unit and five other outpatient malnutrition care facilities, we conducted health promotion activities in the community, targeting children under five years old for screening, and their parents for health education in the municipalities of Lobito and Catumbela.

In mid-2022, we sent a second assessment team to the southwest province of Huila to prepare for a preventive intervention, as the climate and harvesting conditions had not improved, and food prices and inflation remained high.

In the municipalities of Cuvango and Chipindo, which have a combined population of about 130,000, rapid nutrition assessments carried out by MSF in the last quarter of the year did not show alarming rates of malnutrition. Drought was also not as serious as predicted; land was being cultivated and there was sufficient livestock available in the areas we assessed.

Consequently, while maintaining a malnutrition component to our activities, we focused on increasing access to preventive and curative care for malaria.