Zeenia Junkeer is a board certified Naturopathic Physician working in Morne Rouge Haiti
providing care to reduce fetal, neonatal, child and maternal death rates.

Friday, April 29, 2011

It's peanut butter time!

 Today we visited the large community hospital in Cap and met with the Medika Mamba team and finished the training and the introduction to the Medika Mamba program. We were able to see a young girl be weighed which occurs weekly in the program and then we headed over to the Medika Mamba factory which is about 20 minutes from us. Eyleen was a great tour guide as we donned hairnets and lab coats to visit the lab and the processing facilities. It was amazing to see how their place was set up, it was in a house however once you got upstairs it appeared just like a research lab and a commercial kitchen, complete with fancy machinery and aflatoxin fluorescing machines. The whole process is so cool and I am so glad we were able to see how the peanuts were taken from shelled nuts from different parts of Haiti to packaged RTUF (ready to use food) that I hear tastes like the inside of a peanut butter cup J
Every batch of Medika Mamba is tested in house for aflatoxin and then sent to the states for more testing. When we received our shipment we also got a letter certifying the batch, ready for use. We also received the other equipment including scales and height board and the cute little hanging baby holder to weigh the kiddos. The first part of the grant allows for 100kg of Medika Mamba to be donated to the program to begin with. We are very excited as there are a few kiddos we have seen in the clinic that we know would be great candidates for this program and now we can offer it here, outside the city limits. As we get the word out that we can run the program locally I am sure we will get more and more kiddos and soon the initial phase we can run with 10-12 kids will be finished. Luckily if all goes well we can have the Medika Mamba program here at MamaBaby for good! Our patients would benefit immensely and we could potentially save the lives of those who can’t make it to the other program sites.
Way cool if you ask me.




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