Geoffrey Kalebbo is World Vision’s Communications Manager in East Africa. Geoffrey regularly visits health clinics and here he tells of his visit to Shone Health Centre in southern Ethiopia, a clinic that takes care of more than 1,300 malnourished children.

This is Geoffrey's story.

It is raining as we approach Shone Health Centre, nearly 350 kilometres south of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Hundreds crowd the verandahs for shelter and parents shield their babies to their chests. Children’s cries fill the air. They are emaciated, sick and hungry, some of them barely holding onto life.

Recently World Vision supported the health centre’s out-patient program including a stabilisation unit to treat severely malnourished children under 5 years old. Today, over 1,300 children receive life saving help.

One child is 1-year-old Konjit Guidisa. Her mother died when she was only 3 weeks old and her aunt Bekelech Yohannis started taking care of her. “I came to the clinic crying. This baby was dying. diarrhoea and vomiting was killing my Konjit,” says Bekelech. When Konjit was admitted, she weighed less than half the normal weight for children her age.

“I have four children of my own, and Konjit is now my fifth. I was even breast feeding this baby, until I fell sick with malaria and the milk stopped coming.” Malaria aside, poor diet can stop the production of breast milk.

“We try to get the children some food to eat, at least once a day. Even when there is a meal, it is the highly starchy and fibrous false banana meal!” Bekelech and Konjit live in south-western Ethiopia which is known as a region of high food insecurity.

“We have a small piece of land, but it is in the low lands and in a dry area. I had planted some maize but the crop was burned by the sun. I do not have any food at home,” she says.

When discharged, Konjit will return to the out-patients clinic once every week for review and replenish food supplies.

She returns home like a heroine, but this is a home where there is not enough food to eat. A home where she may have to share her highly nutritious food supplements with her other siblings.

You can help feed a child like Konjit by sponsoring a child. Without the support of ordinary Australians, malnutrition and preventable diseases will claim the lives of millions of children workdwide. Get involved with our Child Health Now campaign.