Niger

HKI began working in Niger in 1987 when a team conducted a survey on vitamin A deficiency and trachoma. Today, HKI's activities include:

• Response to the food crisis: Child survival in Diffa >> more
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• Nutrition activities: Vitamin A, iron, and iodine supplementation; breastfeeding practices; child nutrition >> more
• Trachoma control >> more
• Communications for Development rural radio initiative >> more
• Onchocerciasis control >> more

HKI's nutrition programs focus on issues and interventions in line with nutrition priorities for Niger, including improving child survival and the nutritional status of communities, and reinforcing primary health services. HKI integrates vitamin A capsule distribution into routine immunization activities and helps organize National Micronutrient Days (NMD) as part of a mass distribution strategy for vitamin A capsules and iron tablets. The first NMDs were launched by the President of Niger in 1999. Results showed a great improvement in all districts with a vitamin A coverage rate of 90% for children and an iron/folic acid coverage rate of 54% among pregnant women. HKI works in partnership with WHO, UNICEF, Rotary, the Red Cross, and the Ministry of Health.

HKI also implements home gardening projects to promote the production of vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables for family consumption. HKI is currently experimenting with sweet potatoes to produce, in a small area and a limited amount of time, a great number of cuttings for distribution to farmer groups.

HKI's Child Survival project aims to reduce child malnutrition, morbidity, and mortality by increasing the capacity of the health system, communities, and other partners to improve women’s and children’s health and nutritional status. The project utilizes a range of interventions called “Nutrition+” that includes: micronutrient supplementation, growth promotion and improved complementary feeding, early and exclusive breastfeeding, improved diets for mothers, integrated anemia control for pregnant women and children, and control of diarrheal diseases.

Since September 2005 in response to the food crisis, HKI has treated over 37,000 acutely malnourished children under 5 with our Community Therapeutic Care program, including 19,000 children in the Diffa region. We have witnessed a recovery rate of 91% and HKI's efforts have played a vital role in reducing the acute malnutrition rates in Niger from 15.3% to 10.3%.

In the district of Mayahi, HKI is evaluating the effectiveness and biological efficacy of multimicronutrient supplementation of pregnant women. The main objective is to determine whether the use of a multiple micronutrient supplement has greater efficacy than the iron folate supplement currently used. The evaluation will allow the Niger Ministry of Health to decide whether to adopt and support this strategy as national policy. The evaluation will also contribute to the global efforts of UNICEF, WHO, UNU, USAID, and HKI to understand the potential benefits of the multimicronutrient supplement in support of maternal health, pregnancy, and birth outcomes in different country settings.

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HKI-Niger is an important partner in the fight against trachoma. HKI uses the WHO-endorsed S.A.F.E. strategy (Surgery, Antibiotics, Facial cleanliness, Environmental improvement). The improvement of personal and community hygiene has great potential for a sustainable reduction in trachoma transmission, and promoting these strategies through school health programs, training, mass media, and traditional channels of communication are used to reach the target groups. 

In Niger, where a large percentage of the population is illiterate and has limited access to radio and television, HKI works closely with local people using community agents, and health and education agents to make the messages available and understandable. HKI works closely with health districts and other NGOs such as the Carter Center, The Lions‘ Club, ITI, and World Vision.

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In response to the limited access that Nigeriens have to radio broadcasts, HKI has also implemented a Communications for Development rural radio initiative that has installed 15 radio stations in the regions of Diffa and Zinder to promote positive behavior patterns related to health and nutrition. The radio hosts, all trained by HKI, discuss the importance of nutrition, micronutrients such as vitamin A, breastfeeding, and diarrhea case management. HKI also worked with partners such as Africare and the UN Development Programme to establish radio clubs where residents get together to listen to and discuss the programs.

After 27 years of intensive actions and interventions by the Onchocerciasis Control Programme of West Africa (OCP), the transmission of the disease has practically been interrupted in several countries, and the goal now is to to preserve the accomplishments made under OCP.  Onchocerciasis, as a disease, is no longer a public health problem, but the development of "freed zones" that had been deserted but are now being repopulated after the elimination of the disease is a major concern for these countries and their development partners. In Niger, the National Onchocerciasis Devolution Program (NODP) focuses its interventions in the health districts of Tera, Say, Kollo, Boboye, and Gaya.

From 1993 to 1994, HKI observed a lack of educational activities to support and sustain efforts intended to exterminate the major vector of the disease, the black fly.  In response, HKI decided to fill this gap by providing the NODP with Implementation of Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) activities, targeted at the populations of the intervention areas.

Every year, 20 sentinel villages are surveyed to determine the presence of the disease among the human populations through snipping, and entomological surveillance is performed through the dissection of trapped black flies. The prevalence rate, observed at the village level over several years, is almost equal to zero, and dissected flies no longer carry the onchocercia vulvulus parasites. The HKI-supported IEC Strategy is a cycle of six interrelated steps: qualitative and quantitative research, development of educational strategies and messages, pre-test of materials, training of educators, education campaigns, and monitoring and evaluation. Educational messages are disseminated through educators’ outreach interventions, sensitization by the community workers (based on educational materials) in villages, and classes organized by teachers in schools.

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Program Partners

• Africare
• CIDA/Embassy Canada
• CARE
• Catholic Relief Services
• Food and Agriculture Organization of UN
• Gates Foundation
• Global 2000
• Government of Niger
• Hilton Foundation
• ITI
• Micronutrient Initiatives/Canada
• Nippon Foundation
• Pfizer Inc.
• United Nations Development Programme
• UNICEF
• USAID
• World Food Programme
• World Vision

Key Staff

• Marily Knieriemen - Country Director
• Hamani Harouna - Nutrition Unit Chief
• Habou Kalla - Rehabilitation of Blind and Eye Care Unit Manager
• Aissa Mamadoultaibou - Post NIDs Project Manager
• Issa Baguirbi - Child Survival (Diffa) Manager