Clinics across Senegal are facing shortages of Plumpy'Nut, a ready-to-use therapeutic food used to treat malnutrition, after U.S. foreign aid to the country was sharply reduced, health officials and aid groups say.
Yacine Lo said her nearly 2-year-old twins, Diarra and Khadim, were "very, very weak" and that she would walk over three miles to a clinic to get a weekly supply of Plumpy'Nut; she said the twins improved when they received the treatment.
Since 2022, Helen Keller Intl and other nonprofits partnered with the Senegal Ministry of Health to train community health workers to treat severe acute malnutrition; Fatma Diouf, a community health worker in Keur Mbar, described bringing families to a courtyard scale, running a checklist of signs and handing out packets of Plumpy'Nut when children met the criteria.
From October through December of 2024, more than 180,000 children were screened for malnutrition in the area, and from July through September after the cuts, fewer than 87,000 children were screened, a figure the report says represents just 30% of the region's population of children compared with a goal of about 80%.
Ndèye Astou Badiane, country director in Senegal for Helen Keller Intl, said, "About half of the mortality of children under 5 is related to malnutrition." She added, "So many activities that were supported by the American government have stopped all of a sudden."
Latsouk Faye, regional supervisor for food, nutrition and child survival in Diourbel, opened a storage warehouse that he said "used to be full" and which can store about 4,000 boxes; he said the district is getting about half of the RUTF it used to and there are fewer staff to move supplies to smaller clinics.
Diouf said, "We get way less than we used to," and described families who are turned away and sometimes blame clinic staff: "They think we are deceiving them." She recalled one child who, after finding no product at the clinic, "just screams and refuses to go home."
Tening Ngom, the primary caregiver for her baby nephew Aliou, said he recovered while getting Plumpy'Nut but has deteriorated with the shortages: "If they don't have [the product], he starts crying and he doesn't stop crying. He never stops crying," she said.
The State Department did not address questions about the shortages in a statement but said it is programming $23 million in maternal, child health and nutrition resources in Senegal; the flow of RUTF has improved through philanthropic funds and some foreign aid dollars, but the supply remains unstable.