Little Josue.

Little Josue has a cleft palate and a hare lip. He has been in our feeding program for a about a 6 weeks now. His family could not afford to buy formula for him and he was not getting enough nutrition.

Thanks to the generosity of the Herrod Foundation we are able to feed Josue and several other babies who are in need of nutrition.

Josue needs to weigh at least 15 lbs and preferably, 20lbs before he can be operated on. Because he is receiving this formula , he will be at the weight he needs to be to have this operation. Many babies that need this operation are not able to be operated on when the medical teams come because they do not weigh enough.

Most families cannot afford to buy formula for their babies. Quite often ,they will buy one can but water it down so much that it does not provide the nutrition that a baby needs. Other times they use baby cereal mixed with water, this often causes the babies to gag. Sometimes they are only able to give the babies water with sugar, or even a watered down coffee with sugar.

We have several other babies that need formula for a variety of reasons. The mother is not producing enough milk, she is very malnourished, or the mother is ill in hospital after childbirth or sadly, the mother has died in childbirth.

We have a young 15yr old girl who came this week who was raped by her stepfather. She became pregnant. Her mother blamed her and threw her out of the house, she now lives with her grandparents. The family had wanted to give the baby away but they could find no-one to take him, so the 15yr old is raising him. She is very tiny, she doesn't have enough breastmilk to give this little one, he is crying with hunger most of the time. The grandparents cannot afford to buy formula. We have put the baby on our feeding program and we hope that this will help this family.

We also have another situation with many young ones. The mother becomes pregnant and the baby that was breastfeeding gets immediately taken off the breast. The baby had been doing very well with breastmilk but now it has to start on solid foods. This is often when little ones start to become ill and malnourished. We supply these young ones with formula to keep them nourished.

If you would like to help a baby or a young child with formula or milk......it is $17 US a month to help just one child.