Project Healthy Children works with rural millers in low-income countries to fortify staple foods with vitamins and minerals to end malnutrition in Africa.
According to Project Healthy Children, over 2 billion people lack access to essential nutrients, and about 8,000 children die each day from preventable illnesses resulting from micronutrient deficiencies. Micronutrient deficiencies can lead to various health problems, like blindness, birth defects, and serious cognitive impairment.
Food fortification is the addition of key vitamins and minerals (e.g. iron, folic acid, iodine, vitamin A, and zinc) to staple foods to improve their nutritional content and address a nutritional gap in a population. In the developing world, commonly fortified foods include staple products such as salt, maize flour, wheat flour, sugar, vegetable oil, and rice.
Project Healthy Children (PHC) is working to end malnutrition in Africa. To achieve this, PHC:
PHC has already reached 2 million people with fortified flour, and it projects that it will reach 25 million people by 2025.
The cost of food fortification is as low as 26 cents per person per year, depending on the food and specific vitamins added.
To learn more about PHC, we recommend reading GiveWell's detailed 2015 review and its 2020 followup conversation.
This charity meets the requirements to be supported by Giving What We Can as an unlisted charity — read more about our inclusion criteria.
Your donations through our portal are tax deductible in the UK, US, and the Netherlands. Giving What We Can does not take any fees from donors using our platform or from charities listed on our platform. We are independently funded to promote our mission of making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. Read more on our transparency page.