Anaemia, an alarming dietary issue for children in Senegal, invariably leads to serious problems for children’s health, learning and development. Concerned about this chronic problem, five nutrition students at the Université Laval developed the Projet d’apprentissage international en nutrition (PAIN). The project ran for three months in the summer of 2002 in the small fishing village of Yoff. With respect for the customs and lifestyle of the Senegalese people, the delegation identified (through blood tests on over 200 children and certain family members) the anaemic and non-anaemic families. The project revealed that a whopping 66% of the children tested were anaemic. Affected families were then counselled about the positive lifestyles and diet of non-anaemic families in order to help stem the transmission of the disease. The success of the project can be measured by the fact that it is to be extended to families in the capital city of Dakar and its suburbs.
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In 2002, specialists at the Montreal Children’s Hospital adolescent clinic diagnosed almost 100 new cases of eating disorders, the youngest being a 10-year-old child. Detecting an obvious and rapid increase in cases of anorexia in young girls, two Master's students in art therapy at Concordia University took the initiative of setting up a pilot project called 'Group Art Therapy Used in the Treatment of Adolescent Girls Diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa'. For eight weeks, a group of young girls explored various artistic avenues as a way of expressing (and, more importantly, identifying) the root causes of their eating disorders. The preliminary results are highly encouraging and the project's initiators hope to prove (through a second group of girls) that the use of art therapy greatly increases self-esteem, overall development and the perception of one’s image, resulting in a positive influence on the mental health of the young girls.
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