Eighteen babies have died from malnutrition in five months in Ingquza Hill.
Health officials reported the alarming development to Eastern Cape social development MEC Dr Pumza Dyantyi on Thursday.
The babies died between April and September, the officials told the MEC during her visit to Kwa-Gcuda village in a far-flung and remote part of Lusikisiki.
The chilling report tabled by Ingquza Hill health sub-district manager Nomahlubi Mayekiso was met with shock.
Mayekiso reported that between April and June about 58 malnourished babies were admitted to the St Elizabeth Regional Hospital in Lusikisiki and the Holy Cross Hospital in Flagstaff.
“Seven of them died,” she said, adding that during the second quarter of the 2018-19 financial year starting in July to September, 28 underfed babies had been admitted to hospital and that 11 of them died.
“We also have a big challenge because some pregnant women do not go for pregnancy check-ups. Instead they just go to hospital when it’s time to give birth.”
The municipality was previously identified as having the highest child mortality and acute malnutrition rates among young children in the OR Tambo District.
The department of health believes the deaths might have been caused by pregnant women who, instead of visiting clinics for their regular medical check-ups, take traditional concoctions – putting their lives and those of their unborn babies at risk.
But Dyantyi told scores of Kwa-Gcuda villagers that malnutrition was the direct result of many mothers opting to feed their children baby milk formulas instead of breast feeding.
“And they don’t even know how to administer those baby formulas the right way,” she said.
Dyantyi, who was accompanied by other government department officials, donated food parcels to about 21 poor families in the village as part of a short-term intervention in terms of the provincial anti-poverty strategy.
Her department last year funded 25 households to start food gardens.
On Friday, Eastern Cape provincial health spokesperson Lwandile Sicwetsha said at a recent Mandela-Castro community wellness outreach campaign in Mbizana and Lusikisiki, it was discovered that many pregnant mothers were drinking what he termed “herbal intoxication” instead of going to hospitals and clinics for regular checks.
He said even after giving birth, parents stopped breast feeding infants and opted to feed them herbal intoxication.
“They drink these herbs. That is why we had to meet urgently with traditional healers in Alfred Nzo during the campaign last month,” he said, adding that while people drank the herbs during pregnancy, they rushed to hospitals only when there was a problem.
Sicwetsha said because people chose traditional concoctions, this often led to malnourished infants and subsequently high infant mortality figures.
He identified Mbizana and Ntabankulu as some of the areas with the highest infant mortality figures although he was unable to provide statistics at the time of writing on Friday.
He said they were also preaching to the people to involve them in the infant’s first stages of life so that they could be afforded proper medical care instead of relying on traditional concoctions.
Traditional health practitioners in O R Tambo chairperson Nongenile Nyoka said it was imperative that pregnant women went to clinics for regular check-ups.
Nyoka said her organisation worked closely with the health department and its members were the first to send women seeking traditional medicines to health centres.
“We turn them away because we know that nowadays some women lead very bad lifestyles and have poor diets even when pregnant.
“ Some end up giving birth to very weak and thin children as a result, so we tell them ‘you need to go to the clinic’ as soon as soon as they approach us,” she said.
Nyoka said some pregnant women went to traditional health practitioners because they had contracted HIV- Aids and did not want to have tests done at clinics.
“And because of that and knowing there is no way of escaping that, they come running to us. But because some of us are in tune with what is happening and have more insight into some things due to our partnership with the health department, we simply tell them to go the clinics or hospitals first,” she said.
The beneficiaries in Thursday’s event were taught how to grow organic crops by the Mvula Trust, which is one of the many organisations partnering with the social development department in Kwa-Gcuda.
Dyantyi said the idea was to ensure that even if her department ran out of funding, other stakeholders would be able to continue.
“We want to curb the waste of money where departments come in and implement the same projects in our communities.”
Officials from the department of rural development & agrarian reform said they were working with 21 people from the village who were being taught how to run vegetable gardens.
Dyantyi said a first-ever mobile device driven system to help in poverty eradication would be launched this week.
The national integrated social information system is widely used in Latin America to accelerate the fight against poverty through planning, targeting, co-ordination and delivery of anti-poverty services.
The MEC said her department had done profiling of poor families manually for a long time which had proved problematic.
Paperwork got lost or damaged when officials travelled to visit families.
“With this, the information about each family is relayed not only to our provincial office but the national office as well.
“Most importantly, it also helps with the turnaround time in bringing services to the people.”
Ingquza Hill mayor Pat Mdingi lauded Dyantyi’s department for coming to the aid of people of Kwa-Gcuda ...