Integrated health and nutrition program for vulnerable households in Nertiti, Golo and Rokero localities of Central Darfur. (Envelope 1). 01/04/2018
The Jebel Mara areas of Central Darfur State have suffered the effects of protracted conflict since 2003, which flared again in 2016, claiming the lives of many and displacing more than 195,000 people from their homes. Since 2016, WRS has been implementing lifesaving projects in the Health, Nutrition, FSL and WASH in Jebel Marra areas, leveraging resources from donors including SHF, OFDA, WFP and UNICEF addressing needs of 47,727 households. The health and nutrition actions proposed here aims to address the immediate and medium term needs of more than 100,000 returnees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and host community members in Rokero, Golo and Nertiti localities. This project will be implemented for a period of one year starting from 1 April 2018 and ends 31 March 2019. The project is designed based on WRS’s rapid needs assessment in February 2016, October 2017 and February 2018 coupled with assessments and inter-agency reports and WR health and nutrition facilities report. All the reports show that returnees are suffering from food shortage, malnutrition, lack of clean water, poor hygiene and sanitation, epidemic diseases, and lack of access to markets and other social services. Furthermore, the reports indicate that people are still facing critical food shortage resulted in malnutrition. Additionally,, the continued currency devaluation and tremendous increase of the SDG/$ exchange rate which was brought on by internal and external factors, has drastically escalated the price of food and non-food items in Jabal Mara. This increase significantly impacts the nutritional and health status of the community. 

The project will support nine health facilities including Mali, Jebel Ahmar, Center 8 (Nertiti), Kairo, Terbil, Kurmul, Koron and Killing (Golo) and Borgo (Rokero) with curative consultations for common ailments and a focus on maternal and child health, and community level case finding and reporting and improving community health seeking behavior. Regarding nutrition, focus will be in reducing and maintaining a mortality level below the emergency threshold. This will be achieved by implementing CMAM and IYCF activities in order to improve the nutritional status of the communities, especially in children under five years and PLW. To achieve the nutrition objective the project supports 4 OTP and 4 TSFP centers in Nertiti locality (Mali, Kambila, Jabal Ahmar and Diblong villages) and 5 OTP and 5 TSFP in Golo locality (Kairo, Trabil, Killing, Kurmul and Koron villages), and 1 OTP and 1 TSFP in Rokero locality totally supporting 10 OTPs and 10 TSFPs in the three localities. All the health facilities mentioned are currently supported by WR except Killing and Koron. Similarly, WR is currently implementing nutrition activities in most of the mentioned nutrition facilities and planning to expand to Killing and Koron. 

All interventions will be done in partnership with government line ministries, community-based committees, local authorities, community leaders, and beneficiaries themselves. The interventions are designed to meet immediate emergency needs of the beneficiaries while employing approaches that increase community ownership and thus sustainability. The project is planned with full participation of vulnerable people, community leaders, and the stakeholders. The community members have developed beneficiary selection criteria to screen eligible targets which included, Returnees, IDPs, vulnerable host communities. This project follows, a community based, gender sensitive, conflict sensitive, and environmentally friendly and sustainable approach. Effort will be made to build future resilience capacity of the targets besides the lifesaving assistance. To ensure environmental sensitivity of the project training on safe management of medical wastes and community awareness on environment are planned. Also, this project collaborates with FSL to plant seedlings in all health and nutrition centers supported.