BREAKING NEWS, Featured, Health
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THE United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, calls on Nigerians to urgently address the issue of malnutrition which is ravaging many people and has claimed the lives of 500,000 children who die annually in the country
Nigeria is losing 500,000 children to malnutrition annually. According to the United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, malnutrition is also a silent health crisis in the country which afflicts many people and causes brain damage, chronic diseases and stunted growth in children.
Arjan de Wagt, chief nutritionist, UNICEF, stressed that unless something is done, malnutrition would continue to take its tolls on the nation’s children. Wagt said that most of the children die of malnutrition within their first 1000 days on earth. Describing the period as a “window period” Wagt said: “the first 1000 days of a child are so important that they determine not only the child’s growth but also his entire health status throughout the life, up to old age.”
Painting a painted a vivid picture of the havoc malnutrition is causing in Nigeria with startling statistics, Wagt said that one out of every five children in Abuja, the nation’s federal capital territory, are stunted due to malnutrition. He told participants at the two-day UNICEF organised workshop for the media, which is the second in a series to create awareness about malnutrition, that no part of the country is immune to it.
Malnutrition ravages both the rich and the poor as two out of every infants and children are not receiving the right food. “Whenever we talk about malnutrition, the only thing that comes to the mind is that it is for the poor uneducated rural people who have less to eat. But malnutrition also includes eating wrong food or unbalanced diet. It is about lack of knowledge of the food we eat and not lack of food,” he said.
Malnutrition which is a pathological condition brought about by inadequacy of one or more of nutrients essential for the survival growth, development reproduction and capacity to learn and function in the society makes adults who are afflicted to earn 10 percent less than their peers who are not. This is because not many of them are able to go to school and even those who do end up dropping out.
Official statistics provided by Chris Osa Isokpunwu, head of Nutrition, federal ministry of health, showed that 11 percent of women are malnourished in the country and that one in four of them are either obese or overweight. “Our women are getting fatter. That is malnutrition. No part of the country is immune from the scourge as 1000 children daily die of malnutrition, which is the cause of under five deaths. Malnutrition is the underlying cause of death due to malaria and pneumonia,” Isokpunwu told the audience.
“Malnutrition is not about lack of food but provision of adequate nutrition. It’s about exclusive breastfeeding of your child for the first six months and not with cow milk; feeding your child with pap mixed with soya milk instead of imported processed cow milk. What we want is to ask the press to prevent one million children suffering from malnutrition and coming into the programme of government to alleviate the situation so that resources can be spent on other things”, he said.
Similarly, Geoffrey Njoku, communication specialist of the UNICEF, spoke along the same line with top officials of the federal and Cross River ministries of health in attendance. Njoku said that at the previous workshop participants came up with #StopChildMalnutritionInNigeria for disseminating information on malnutrition.
Although, UNICEF announced that through its numerous interventions, about 208,000 lives of mal-nourished children have been saved in the last 12 months, the speakers stressed the need for more financial assistance from donor agencies to increase the number of those it could save from the dangerous effect of malnutrition to one million per annum.
They stressed the importance of people regularly going for de-worming and for them to observe behavioural change as well as take other positive measures to stem the tide of death from malnutrition.
They also appealed to media organisations to join in the crusade against malnutrition so that more lives could be saved and to bring a new way of dieting to ensure proper nutrition into the lives of Nigerians.
Chido Onuma, coordinator of African Centre for Media and Information Literacy, who spoke on “How Can The Media Support Advocacy for Increased Resources for Nutrition Programming” urged journalists to be in the forefront of advocating for behavioural change amongst Nigerians to reverse the trend.
The workshop, which drew no fewer than 50 journalists, including online publishers, editors, senior correspondents from newspapers, television and radio stations ended on Thursday.
— Sep 7, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT
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