Our teams are caring for millions of children with malnutrition. LEARN MORE

Friend,

Time was running out, and Oumar* wasn’t getting better.

After days of treatment for severe malnutrition, Oumar was struggling to breathe. His temperature was alarmingly high—his heart rate perilously low.

Something else was wrong. Our team at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Massakory, Chad, raced to find a diagnosis. Oumar wasn’t just severely malnourished; he also had tuberculosis (TB).

Once we began treating him for both malnutrition and TB, Oumar started improving. Treatment for severe malnutrition begins with a sucrose-rich therapeutic milk, transitioning to a diet higher in calories and protein as patients improve. After nearly a month in the hospital, Oumar recovered enough to be discharged.

I wish you could have seen the smile on Oumar’s mother’s face on the day when I told her Oumar was strong enough to go home. This is the power of your support—your generosity is what makes our work possible. Take a moment to learn more about our lifesaving work treating malnutrition around the world.

People often think that treating malnutrition is just about food. But when children are malnourished, their immune systems are weakened, and they’re more susceptible to contracting other infections and diseases. Even a simple cold can quickly become deadly.

That is why a rapid response to malnutrition is critical. Our mobile clinics travel to regions at high risk for malnutrition, where our teams assess a child’s condition in seconds and treat them with ready-to-use therapeutic food that contains all the nutrients a child needs to regain strength.

But sometimes nutritional treatment is not enough. When our mobile clinics find severely malnourished children or those who have developed infections, like Oumar, they are rushed to our hospital, where we have a dedicated department for inpatient feeding and an intensive care unit.

In 2023 alone, MSF mobile units provided lifesaving care for 63,000 children in Chad. Here at the hospital in Massakory, we treated nearly 6,000 children.

Thank you so much for your support and for helping us provide care for people who need it most, wherever they may be. Learn more about how MSF is addressing the deadly malnutrition crisis.

Sincerely,

Soldongar Ngaro
Nurse Supervisor
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières

*Name has been changed to protect the confidentiality of patient

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