• Home director used to spend her salary on children but she retired.
• Facility is meant for 40 children now has 53.
Image: JOSEPH KANGOGO
Sunrise Children’s Home in Kabarnet town, Baringo, is appealing for funds to feed, shelter, clothe and educate malnourished children.
The facility is home to two out of five starved children rescued from a family in Sabor on July 26.
“My problem has always been unavailability of food and money to take the children to hospital,” their father Joseph Cherutich said.
One of the children, a six year-old, died while three are still admitted to Baringo County Referral Hospital.
“The children with us now here are recuperating well although we are strained with insufficient resources to offer them maximum support,” the home’s director Mary Sang said.
Sang was busy feeding Jeptoo Cherutich, aged one and half years, whose skin has began peeling off as as heals when the Star visited the facility on Monday morning.
She said the children were very weak, sleepy and with rough skin when they were received but they are now regaining their health.
“She is getting on well. As you can see her wrinkled skin is beginning to shed off. She will soon regain her health and energy” Sang said.
The number of children in the facility established in 2003 has grown from the initial target of 40 to 53.
Director Sang is a 60-year-old government retiree who over the years used her salary to run the home.
“I have no source of income since I retired early this year” she said.
She appealed to the county and national governments and well wishers to donate foodstuff, clothes and funds to help the children.
The home needs a new boys' dormitory as currently the children are congested in a small old structure.
Sang said she pays school fees for 10 of the children in secondary school.
Sang attributes the growing number of neglected children to consumption of local brews.
Baringo Health chief officer Gideon Toromo said the children are suffering from acute protein energy malnutrition caused by poor diet.
Toromo said many children in Baringo suffer from malnutrition but most cases are unreported.
He said inflammation of the skin is due to lack of magnesium, adding that because of low immunity the children are prone to pneumonia and diarrhea.
“Malnourished children have low weight compared to their age because they lack important nutrients like protein and the infections are normally treated with antibiotics,” he said.
Toromo said needy families require material and moral support from leaders and well wishers. They also need education on family planning and proper nutrition.