I work with Action Against Hunger as an emergency nutrition coordinator and am lucky enough to see firsthand the impact that jointly tackling water and malnutrition together can have. Action Against Hunger works with an ‘integrated approach’ to help people suffering from hunger and malnutrition, and we believe we can only be effective at this by acknowledging water, food and health are tightly interlinked. If we only provided food and ignored the essential right people have to access clean drinking water, we would undoubtedly fail in our mission!
The causes of malnutrition can be complicated, but we can consider two broad immediate factors: lack of food and disease. Water-borne diseases can cause dehydration, lack of appetite and alter the body’s metabolism. These factors in turn can cause malnutrition and start the vicious cycle whereby malnutrition reduces immunity and increases the risk of further infection. This is why in Chad Action Against Hunger is working hard to reduce the impact of cholera outbreaks, and in Haiti and Pakistan we focused the first relief efforts on providing clean water.
Once clean water is provided for communities it provides the platform for other food and nutrition-related projects to take place more successfully. You can find out more about our work on www.actionagainsthunger.org.uk
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