Health
The Nutrition Society of Nigeria (NSN) has urged various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) where nutrition was domiciled to prioritise training of nutrition specialists in order to boost the country’s nutrition status.
The President of the society, Mr Bartholomew Brai, made the call at the ongoing Annual General meeting of the society on Wednesday in Abuja.
The theme of the AGM is: “Promotion of nutrition for sustainable development: Current trends and innovation”.
Brai, who described nutrition as multi-sectoral issue, identified some of the concerned areas of nutrition as Agriculture, Health and Education, among others.
He described the nation’s current nutritional status as worrisome, adding that the situation had not improved significantly in the past few years despite contributions by stakeholders and donors.
“There is need for urgent capacity building among members of the society to tackle the scourge of malnutrition in the various states in the country.“I really commend the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for supporting the society by funding a project tagged Engage Nutrition Academia in Nigeria (ENAN) in November 2018.
“To this end, the society applied for a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the ENAN project had 250,000 dollars approved for implementation in November last year,” he said.
He said that the grant provided a three-year support for NSN to build needed capacity to improve overall nutrition programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
He added that the grant could lead to greater accountability and efficient use of resources.
“It will train our members on how to generate and use credible data for policy and programmatic impact,” Brai said.
He added that the project would serve as the springboard for an innovative move to nurture human capacity in nutrition knowledge, skill and competence.
The president of the society however appealed to the Federal and State Governments to give nutrition the deserved priority by allocating and releasing sufficient funds for the implementation of nutrition programmes. (NAN)
-Sep 11, 2019 @17:57 GMT |
Tags: Society seeks capacity building for nutrition experts
