Dr. Patricia Wolff, a St. Louis pediatrician and founder of Meds & Foods for Kids, will be leaving her private practice to devote her time to the effort to provide food for malnourished children in Haiti.
Wolff is telling her patients at Forest Park Pediatrics that she is leaving the practice on June 30. She founded the nonprofit in 2003 and has split her time between her practice and the organization since then. She began volunteering in Haiti in 1988.
The group that Wolff founded and directs has created a food called Medika Mamba, which is Creole for Peanut Butter Medicine, and is a peanut-based solution that is a lifesaver for children with severe malnutrition.
Wolff has been involved for years with fundraising to try to build a new factory in Cap-Haitien, in northern Haiti, where the solution can be processed and that will allow Meds & Food to increase production tenfold. The factory will also allow the group to double the number of Haitian farmers it needs to supply peanuts.
The nonprofit currently uses a facility that is situated in a house with limited capacity.
After the earthquake in Haiti last year, donations to the group increased dramatically -- and included $280,000 from Nestlé, $200,000 from Emerson, $100,000 from Google and $100,000 from Novus International, a St. Charles County-based company that makes supplements for animal feed.
The president and CEO of Novus, Thad Simons, is also heading a campaign to raise $3 million for the new Meds & Food for Kids factory. Construction of the factory is expected to begin this summer, with completion targeted for the end of the year.
Wolff wrote in a letter to her patients at Forest Park Pediatrics that building the new factory with higher-tech machinery and training staff "is possible in a country like Haiti only with a huge effort on my part and that of the many people who help MFK with its missions.
"I cannot do justice to you, my patients, and this project in Haiti," Wolff wrote. "There are just not enough hours in the day."
Wolff is married to Missouri Supreme Court Judge Michael Wolff, who announced previously that he will leave the court this year to teach at St. Louis University School of Law.
Forest Park Pediatrics has recruited Dr. Dana Ankney, a St. Louis native who trained at Wake Forest Medical School in North Carolina, to take Wolff's place. Ankney has been working at St. Louis Children's Hospital for the past three years.
It has been said by some that packaging can play an important role in fighting world hunger. Notes a paper by the World Packaging Organization (WPO) and the International Packaging Press Organization (IPPO), "The global packaging industry can contribute greatly to increased prosperity and sustainability in the world by ensuring that larger amounts of food reach more consumers, preserved in a way that results in better quality and smaller losses."
Since 2003, packaging has been an integral component of a program developed in Haiti by Dr. Patricia Wolff, professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Washington University's School of Medicine, to combat childhood malnutrition. Meds & Food for Kids (MFK), a registered U.S. nonprofit and a registered NGO in Haiti, develops, produces, and distributes a shelf-stable Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) in standup pouches that offer superior barrier properties and convenience.
Called Medika Mamba by the Haitians, meaning "Peanut Butter Medicine" in Creole, the RUTF combines peanuts, sugar, and oil, along with a powdered vitamin and mineral mixture, to create an energy-dense, highly nutritious food source for children and others suffering from malnutrition. According to MFK, one in 10 children in Haiti is acutely malnourished, while one in five is underweight. It adds that one in 14 will die before reaching the age of five.
In late 2010, MFK installed new packaging equipment in its factory—a two-story house just outside of Cap Haitien—that has increased its daily production of Medika Mamba twofold. Among the equipment is a new piston filler and a band sealer donated by Bosch Packaging Technology, Inc. to accommodate the higher speeds reached by the new filling system.
Speaking in a video about MFK, Dr. Wolff notes that one of the things that makes MFK different from other organizations providing food relief is that it has also taken on the challenge of addressing the underlying causes of malnutrition in Haiti: poverty and lack of employment. As much as possible, MFK purchases its raw materials from Haitian farmers and uses local labor to manufacture the product.
Says MFK's Web site, "By purchasing raw materials in Haiti and sharing knowledge with farmers about how to improve their crops, we help develop markets and encourage production and growth. MFK agronomists work with farmers, helping to improve the quality of their peanuts and their yield. We bring information about modern methods of planting, cultivation and fertilizing, treating seeds to avoid fungus and toxins, and controlling weeds. Farmers are introduced to machinery and tools that make their work easier, and at the same time increase their yields."
As Jamie VanArtsdalen, MFK quality assurance supervisor, tells Packaging World, "We are not only treating malnutrition, but also working to prevent it by implementing better agricultural practices and job creation."
Since 2003, progress, says MFK operations coordinator Thomas Stehl in the video, has been "exponential." In 2003, he says, MFK produced 800 kg of Medika Mamba per year. "By the end of 2009, we will have produced 75,000 kilograms of Medika Mamba—enough to have saved over 6,000 children," he adds.
With production increasing, in 2010 MFK decided to move from its mostly manual packaging process to semi-automated systems. Formerly, the facility used four operators to fill the 500-g and 1-kg stand-up pouches with the viscous product using a pitcher. Filled pouches were then sealed using a hand-actuated impulse sealer.
Says Dave Harmann, packaging consultant to MFK, "The pouch material is quite thick and requires consistent time, temperature, and pressure to seal effectively. The previous sealer often produced inconsistent seals due to variations in how it was operated."
The stand-up pouch is a 5-mil, three-layer lamination of polyvinylidene chloride-coated PET/nylon/white linear low-density polyethylene and is supplied by ABC Packaging of Avon, OH (440/934-1477). The pouch is printed in one color and includes a resealable zipper feature.
The new band sealer, the HS-CII™ Series from Bosch, was donated to MFK in May 2010. Prior to being shipped to Haiti, it was used for testing in conjunction with a new piston filler from Volumetric Technologies at Volumetric's facility in Minnesota. The lightweight, portable sealer, along with the filler, was installed at the Cap Haitien facility in September. Producing a 1⁄8-in. wide seal, the machine is said to handle film thicknesses from 1 to 6 mil and allows operating pressure and temperature to be easily changed to accommodate different bag styles and thicknesses. A temperature indicator signals when the machine is at the desired sealing temperature, and air-cooled cooling bars set the seal for immediate bag handling.
Says Harmann, "The Bosch sealer provides consistent time, temperature and pressure, resulting in reliable seals."
Packaging equipment doubles capacity
To provide greater filling capacity, MFK selected Volumetric's Model 10180-1 single-head piston filler, which allows for the production of 90 kg/hr of 500-g pouches.
While the number of packaging operators (four) has not changed, the new equipment allows MFK to produce almost twice the product as it previously could each day, "which means more children can be treated," says VanArtsdalen. He adds, "Since production is higher without adding people, the unit cost for Medika Mamba is lower."
With the new equipment, MFK is growing by leaps and bounds and is now working toward a new larger production and packaging plant. Notes MFK's Web site, "A larger, more efficient Meds & Food for Kids factory will increase our Medika Mamba production from 80 metric tons to 800 metric tons annually, and the number of children who can be treated will likewise increase tenfold to 80,000. A facility designed for safe food processing and large-scale production will in turn drive economic development by creating more jobs and more demand for peanuts from local farmers."
Perhaps 300 professionals from the St. Louis area have helped in Haiti in the past year, and most want to help the Haitians help themselves.
After two decades of helping in Haiti, St. Louis pediatrician and Washington University medical professor Dr. Patricia Wolff sees new hope, even though the earthquake stalled her food production expansion plans.
“I am seeing a silver lining,” she said, among the nation’s government and business leaders. “Lots of them are not the same cast of characters we used to see. There is a lot of extreme pressure to do the right thing, from many places -- other nations, and the people of Haiti. Such high visibility doesn’t allow for ‘business as usual',” she said.
Wolff was last in Haiti about a month ago. She wearies of North Americans whining about Haiti’s corrupt government, she said.
“We have plenty of corruption here,” she said. “In Haiti, it does not involve huge amounts of money, suitcases of money like here. Nor do we hear huge lies, like we heard about Iraq.”
Wolff first went to Haiti with Bob and Jane Corbett, when the once married couple from Webster Groves annually escorted students from Nerinx Hall and other area schools to work at Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity home.
“How can I get discouraged when I’ve seen thankful Haitians who never seem to weary?” she said. Wolff spends nearly half her year in Haiti, three weeks at a time.
She now consults and supervises qualified Haitian doctors and nurses rather than treats patients. She spends hours with accountants and doing other administrative work.
She began the nonprofit Meds and Food for Kids, better known as MFK, which employs Haitians to make a food successful in Africa in treating malnutrition. The food combines peanuts ground into a paste with powdered milk, sugar, vegetable oil, minerals and vitamins. The peanut butter medicine, medika mamba in Haitian Creole, requires no addition of water and no refrigeration.
More than 90 percent of malnourished children regain health and reboot their vulnerable immune systems. The treatment takes 44 pounds of this mixture eaten over six weeks and costs just $100. Wolff's production unit, run out of a house in Cape Haitian, has stabilized 20,000 Haitian children over the past year.
Even with problems of getting supplies, the MFK production team has made more than they had in any previous year, but did not double production as it had expected.
“We got a new low-tech grinder, which is more efficient,” she said. “So we made more even with the earthquake, electricity (problems), demonstrations before and after the elections, and accusing the U.N. for causing the cholera, even with all of that and the mandatory three weeks vacation.”
Wolff's pre-earthquake plans for a real factory are taking longer to realize. In July, she told the Beacon that she expected to open the factory by the end of 2010, but now she hopes to be in production by early summer.
“We will get the first of our high-tech machinery in February, begin installing it in March in the current building, until we get the factory built,” she said.
“We will be able to make eight times as much medika mamba,” she said. “We will be able to help 80,000 children and employ 50 Haitians.”
Part of the delay comes because revised plans for the factory call for a bigger building with special high-tech equipment, according to the stricter protocols of the formula’s recipe owner, Nutriset of Malauney, Normandy, France.
See http://www.stlbeacon.org/issues-politics/world/107386-second-part-haiti-anniersary-story for complete article.