Hospital Food Project
Shirati, like many rural hospitals, cannot afford to feed its patients. The patients’ families are expected to feed them, but many are too poor or live too far away. The situation is even more dire for children hospitalized with malnutrition, who desperately need nutritious meals for faster recovery.
When our supporters, Kate Brady and Steven Kahn, learned about this in 2008, they created the Hospital Food Project with the goal of providing a nutritious daily meal to patients. In 2010, we built an outdoor kitchen on Hospital grounds, and partnered with a women's group to prepare and serve the meals, this also provides local women employment. Initially meals consisted of cassava porridge and tea. We have since created a more nutritious menu by combining locally grown, easy to prepare, and low cost ingredients. Today, the menu includes yellow split peas and millet topped with avocado; sweet potato, mung bean and spinach topped with peanuts; and fish with rice and beans. Until recently, funding for the project was only sufficient to provide meals five days a week to the maternity and pediatric wards. In late 2015, thanks to the fundraising efforts of Victoria von Salmuth, a German medical student, we were able to expand the project to serving meals seven days a week. See Victoria’s INIGEM Shirati Food Program page in German. Even a small donation of $10 will help us provide up to 30 meals, so please DONATE. |
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