The world is under the heavy yoke of malnutrition and in the
developing world, the statistics are grim. Ghana, Africa, and
invariably the entire world are reeling in the throes of malnutrition
which is having a devastating toll on the citizenry and affects
productivity with high infant and maternal mortalities. Over 230
million (39%) children under five are chronically malnourished with
54% of deaths among children under 5 years linked to malnutrition.
In Ghana, only 76,500 children under five out of 2.55 million children
have normal weight. 612,000 are underweight, 51,000 are
chronically malnourished, 178,500 have acute malnutrition and
1,887,000 are anaemic. 43% of pregnant mothers received Vitamin
A supplementation within two months after delivery and 47% of
mothers are anaemic. (GDHS, 2005). Protein Energy Malnutrition
(PEM) is the single greatest cause of child mortality (54%) with over
19 million middle and low income earners in danger of malnutrition.
This grave situation led Pastor Joseph Brenyah, some for-profit and
not-for-profit companies and farmer, faith and community based
organizations to establish Moringa Oleifera Farms and Industries
Limited (MOFIL) in 2008 as a hybrid for-profit company to develop
produce and market high quality, nutritious, natural and organic
brand of Moringa oleifera fortified products to solve this problem.
Our hope lies in this plant whose leaves have been found capable of
wiping every aspect of malnutrition out of the world not to talk of the
many benefits derived from other parts of it, namely: the seeds,
flowers, roots and bark. Our vision is Ghana Without Malnutrition
and ultimately, the World Without Malnutrition. To galvanise support
for this work, we entered the Global Social Benefit Incubator program and
which is in partnership with
GAIN in 2009. By emerging as finalist, we seek further support for
the online community to vote for us to be among the top three spots
which will bring us the needed media publicity and financial clout we
require for our work.
Profile of the Innovator
|
