Several people have asked me for more information about the Plumpy'Nut product that we are using for famine relief in Uganda.  

Plumpy'Nut is produced by a company called Nutriset, located in France. The website for Nutriset is www.nutriset.fr . There is an area of the website specifically for information about local production of Plumpy'Nut, called Plumpy'Nut in the Field.



Plumpy'Nut is produced and commercially packaged at the Nutriset facility in Malaunay, France. The product is used in developing countries where famine and malnutrition are taking lives of young children, so Nutriset ships product to those countries. But the Nutriset staff also encourage communities in those developing countries to produce the product locally, close to where it is needed and at much lower cost than importing the product from France.

Most of the ingredients needed are found in local markets: Peanuts, powdered milk, sugar, and vegetable oil. The added ingredient comes from Nutriset -- a highly-concentrated nutrient mix in powdered form, comes in a can for making 50kg of Plumpy'Nut, which is over 1500 servings for the children.



The Leave a Little Room team decided to learn how to do this. One of our team members went to Malaunay, France so that the Nutriset team could teach her the production process. She then returned to Denver, gathered the production items that we needed, and taught a team of six LLR members to produce Plumpy'Nut in a local setting.








Then our team of six headed to Entebbe, Uganda to teach a group of 30 health care professionals in Gulu how to make this therapeutic baby food for the malnourished babies of that region.   Some from that group have formed a cooperative to begin production on a mid-size scale, providing Plumpy'Nut to the regions hospitals and remote clinics for rapid, effective treatment of malnourished babies.

Peace,
Donna Auguste
www.leavealittleroom.org