Update on Project Peanut Butter in Sierra Leone

For The Friends of Children at World of Children

Dr. Mark J. Manary

Project Peanut Butter

Sierra Leone is the country with the worst child nutrition crisis and the very worst child survival statistics in the world. For these reasons Sierra Leone became the site for a new Project Peanut Butter initiative. This project became the focus of our fundraising and outreach efforts. The World of Children award served as the catalyst for beginning this project and funding from World of Children precipitated a matching grant making this program possible.

In the past few months Project Peanut Butter in Sierra Leone has made many steps forward. During my visit in the Summer of 2009 to this program based in Freetown, Sierra Leone that was created to address the needs of severely malnourished children, significant achievements were made in the factory that produces therapeutic food and in the feeding sites where this medicine food is distributed to children who need it.

In the beginning of June, a brand new set of machinery custom made for large-scale production of Ready-to-Use Therapeutically Food (RUTF) was put into use. This was not done without difficulty. There is generally no publicly supplied electricity in Sierra Leone and the industrial sector in Freetown is markedly lacking and still recovering from the civil war in the 1990s and early 2000s. These two problems were solved by the installation of a large electric generator and extensive searching through the city for much-needed items, such as plastic bottles for packaging RUTF. The functioning machinery produces 180 kilogram batches of RUTF in less than two hours, making it feasible to produce over 1 metric ton of RUTF in a single day, which is enough to save the lives of over 65 severely malnourished children.

This modern equipment is a huge leap forward from the original bakery-style mixer being used that could put out only 20 kilograms in the same amount of time, which then had to be poured into bottles by hand.

The factory is a clean, efficient place where every effort is taken to prevent problems with the food that is produced there, including common risks for peanut butter-based products like Salmonella and aflatoxin (a carcinogen) contamination. During July and August, an extensive quality control system was implemented that puts the factory in line with the highest standards for health and safety in America and Europe. The food produced is regularly tested in a laboratory for safety and quality.

The other end of Project Peanut Butter in Sierra Leone is seeing and treating malnourished children at feeding sites set up in areas with a high concentration of children with malnutrition. There are many areas where the feeding program run by Project Peanut Butter can have a great impact on child survival, because Sierra Leone is reported to have the highest child mortality rate.

Typical mud brick home in rural Sierra Leone

In the past three months, Project Peanut Butter has doubled the number of feeding sites it runs in government and private hospitals, from 3 to 6. No child is prevented from receiving this life-saving treatment by hospital or other fees because this medicine food is provided completely free to the children who need it. As well, the enrollment process for this medical intervention makes sure that the children who need it receive the treatment, and no child who is malnourished is turned away for any reason.

One day, in one of the largest and most successful feeding sites set up by Project Peanut Butter in Njala, Sierra Leone, we screened over 200 children, enrolling over 100 new children. They began the 6-week course that puts these children aged 6 months to 5 years back on track for healthy growth and development, with an expected recovery rate of over 90%, the best therapy in existence for the problem of malnutrition.

Project Peanut Butter in Sierra Leone is led by the married couple Mrs. Chelsea Beasley and Mr. Michael Beasley, who are committed to the children of Sierra Leone.

Chelsea and Mike at their home in Freetown, Sierra Leone

Chelsea and Mike live full-time in Freetown and plan to stay for a number of years to advance the goals of Project Peanut Butter. “Whatever it takes” is the motto stated often by Chelsea and Mike, and it shows in the unhesitating way they choose the struggles of living in the developing world and building an organization to aid malnourished children, such as numerous flat tires and car problems encountered when driving on roads not made for cars in the rural areas and villages of Sierra Leone.

We are also grateful to Phyllis and Jason Marquitz, who came to Sierra Leone in June of this year to contribute to the project. Mrs. Marquitz brought expertise from her background in food safety working for the FDA and Mr. Marquitz helped to train nurses and village health workers in the administration of feeding programs with RUTF.

Our goals for Project Peanut Butter in Sierra Leone are to create a self-sustaining, effective program run largely by local Sierra Leonean employees and healthcare workers, to produce high-quality, low cost RUTF with local ingredients, and most importantly to address the needs of the approximately 20,000 children in Sierra Leone afflicted with malnutrition. With our help, we can change the future of these children for the better.

Street art in Freetown reading, “What will be the future of Sierra Leone?”