Her daughter was treated for pneumonia and acute malnutrition, then fell ill again with tuberculosis. Hundreds of thousands of young children across the country need lifesaving nutrition care.
By EEW Magazine Online Editors
Cloth curtains stamped “Tororo Hospital” hang around a wooden bench at Tororo District Hospital in eastern Uganda. (Jason Edwards/Getty Images)
A mother in Uganda took her feverish baby girl to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed pneumonia and acute malnutrition. The baby received treatment, and mother and daughter returned home. Then the baby fell ill again. An X-ray revealed tuberculosis, and her condition worsened until she died, according to an account from a Christian relief organization working in Uganda.
Empowering Everyday Women Ministries, which publishes EEW Magazine Online, has been following the organization’s work. EEW Magazine Online is withholding the family’s names to protect their privacy.
“When I read what happened to this mother and her baby, I wept,” said Dianna Hobbs, the ministry’s founder and CEO. “This story broke my heart. There is such an urgent need for care, and every time we lose a child to hunger and malnutrition, my heart aches.”
About 3.6 million people face high levels of acute food insecurity across the 60 districts covered by Uganda’s latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis. That number is projected to reach 4.4 million between February and June 2027.
Round brick homes with thatched roofs stand on dry grassland in Uganda. (Mark Newman/Getty Images)
The analysis, presented Oct. 26 by Ugandan officials and the United Nations, projects that 465,900 children under 5 and 246,300 pregnant and breastfeeding women will need treatment for acute malnutrition between April 2026 and March 2027.
El Niño-driven dry spells caused extreme crop and pasture losses across much of the country this year, the IPC said, while food prices climbed. The U.N. appeal also cites declining humanitarian assistance. The northeastern Karamoja region carries the heaviest burden. Two of its districts, Kotido and Kaabong, are classified as Critical for acute malnutrition.
An empty granary sits at a homestead in Kalojuka village in Kotido district, in Uganda’s Karamoja region, on July 23, 2025. (Hajarah Nalwadda/Getty Images)
Hunger and illness feed each other. Undernutrition weakens the immune system and raises the risk of tuberculosis. TB in turn drives further weight loss and wasting, according to World Health Organization guidance on childhood TB. In countries with a high TB burden, 2% to 24% of acutely malnourished children have been diagnosed with the disease, WHO reports.
The relief organization had been providing the family with emergency food before the baby died, according to its account. It continues to support the mother with food, financial help, and emotional and spiritual care.
Treatment is reaching other children. Of 108 children admitted for severe wasting between July and September, 97 were successfully treated and released, U.N. Resident Coordinator Leonard Zulu said at the Oct. 26 launch.
The joint appeal by U.N. agencies and their partners requires $61.2 million, with about $50 million still unfunded. It covers nutrition screening and treatment, health care, water and sanitation, and cash assistance for families in Karamoja, 37 other districts and eight refugee settlements.
Empowering Everyday Women’s hunger relief reaches from Western New York to communities overseas. In Haiti, it provides ready-to-use therapeutic food, the peanut-based treatment for severe acute malnutrition, to children in need, work EEW Magazine Online reported on last month. Through national partnerships, it also supports the food distribution networks of hunger-relief organizations.
EEW Magazine Online invites readers to pray for this mother as she grieves her daughter. Also lift up the parents across Uganda seeking food and care for their children, and the workers bringing it to them.
“The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” Psalm 34:18 (KJV)
