We can END Deaths from STARVATION. NOT IN A DECADE. NOW.
We don’t need a breakthrough. We just need the will to try a new approach.
Malnutrition
The leading cause of death for children under age five, claiming over 2 million young lives each year.
Right now, over 40 million children are suffering from acute malnutrition. Many of these children are so emaciated that they can barely move. Their arms can shrink to the size of a quarter. Often, they are too weak to even cry. Every 30 seconds, one of these children starves to death.
We could prevent nearly all of these deaths with two simple, proven, cost-effective solutions. These solutions can be scaled up right now, cheaply and sustainably, so that no child has to die of starvation.
OES has been launched to do just that.
Solution #1: Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food—or RUTF
A peanut-based medical food paste packed with the vitamins, minerals, and proteins a starving child needs to rapidly recover. A child with severe malnutrition is often too sick to eat regular food. RUTF is formulated to bring them back from the brink of death in a matter of weeks.
The cost to reach every starving child with RUTF is approximately $1.7 billion per year. That’s less than Americans spend on snacks every two days.
Scaling up this product alone would end mass child deaths from starvation.
Solution #2: Multiple Micronutrient Supplementation (MMS)
A single daily prenatal vitamin that combines 15 essential vitamins and minerals.
The best way to stop babies from dying of starvation is to prevent them from becoming malnourished in the first place. Prenatal vitamins can prevent anemia in mothers and help children get the nutrients they need before they’re born.
Our model is simple
Mobilize funding: The world has a bad habit of funding malnutrition solutions on a crisis-by-crisis basis, and we’re breaking it. Instead, we proactively engage donors and governments to mobilize smarter, more sustainable funding to get RUTF and MMS to every child and mom who needs them.
Private philanthropies cover all operating costs, so every public dollar goes directly to purchasing and delivering lifesaving treatment.
Fund the best, most cost-effective providers: OES has an unshakable commitment to transparency, cost-effectiveness, and independence. Not a dollar will be wasted on inefficient processes or excessive bureaucracy. We run transparent, competitive processes to source the cheapest, highest quality manufacturers, shippers, and on-the-ground delivery partners for RUTF and MMS. Our focus on cost-effectiveness and our large-scale, long-term financing allows us to negotiate cheaper contracts and build more resilient supply chains. This approach will allow us to massively lower costs.
Rigorously monitor and transparently report results: We continuously track every dollar spent, every person treated, and every life saved. We will publicly disclose any waste or fraud, and engage independent evaluators to verify our results.
We plan to use this model to deliver 3.2 billion packages of RUTF and 14 billion tablets of MMS by 2032.
That will save the lives of 1.8 million children.