Preventing malnutrition in Gombe: The UNICEF example
By Hajara Leman, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
If there is anything cardinal to most of the operations of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), especially in rural areas, it is its focus on enlightenment campaigns and other humanitarian activities on the prevention of key ailments affecting the wellness of newborns and children.
UNICEF’s robust work in the world’s toughest places to reach the most disadvantaged children and adolescents to protect the rights of every child everywhere will validate its relevance to useful humanitarian gestures, observers note.
They observe further that since UNICEF found out that more than eight percent of children in Gombe State are severely malnourished, it has given it a priority to inaugurate its Community Management of Acute Malnutrition programme.
UNICEF also notes that more than 30 percent of newborns are exclusively breastfed, while only 22 percent of children aged between six and 23 months old in Gombe State receive a minimum acceptable diet, and not more than eight percent of them receive minimum dietary diversity.
In light of these observations, UNICEF inaugurated the Food and Nutrition Policy in Gombe State to guide it to address the hindrances to food and nutrition security from individual, household, community, and local governments.
Some approaches to tackling malnutrition by UNICEF include the introduction of a nutrition programme in its package to fast-track efforts at preventing malnutrition in Gombe and its environs, Mrs. Philomena Irene, Nutrition Specialist and UNICEF Field Officer, explains.
According to her, children, especially in the north-eastern part of the country, are living in chronic food poverty, with one child in four not meeting the minimum dietary requirements.
“Other areas of need, such as water sanitation and hygiene, agriculture, education, and social protection programmes, are parts of the package to eliminate malnutrition among children.
“While we promote exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, we also encourage mothers to add complementary foods thereafter, from six months to two years,” she explains further.
She explains further that apart from this initiative, UNICEF has been promoting the cultivation and eating of different local food items that are nutritious, such as the orange-flesh sweet potatoes that grow well in Gombe State and its environs.
The fund has always insisted that ways to prevent malnutrition include eating a healthy and balanced diet from the main food groups including varieties of fruit and vegetables and starchy foods such as bread, rice, potatoes, and pasta, among other foods, according to her.
Irene also notes: “We have mothers here that have the orange-fleshed sweet potato vines in their backyard grown with other vegetables such as okra, spinach, cabbage, and tomatoes so that children can feed on a variety of foods that are nutrient-dense and palatable in taste to prevent malnutrition’’.
She says UNICEF has been engaging people to prepare nutrition recipes along women for demonstration purposes, with the participants replicating the same in their homes.
“UNICEF has trained nursing mothers on complementary feeding projects in Gombe State, aimed at reducing malnutrition among infants and improving child survival,’’ she restates.
She explains further that the first two years of a child’s life are crucial to their lives saying that providing proper nutrition during that period could reduce the rates of mortality among children.
Some concerned residents of Gombe State recall that some years ago, UNICEF provided a larger percentage of the programme’s costs via capacity building and supply of ready-to-use therapeutic food.
The arrangement was that the state and local governments would contribute the remaining percentage of the cost for the provision of structures manpower, and supply of essential drugs, they observe.
Although the programmememe would last two years and state government would be expected to take over the funding and expand the programmememe, managing some components of the programmememe has generated criticism.
Clnic’s view of UNICEF services particularly as it concerns the state government’s approach to children’s welfare and malnutrition, notwithstanding, concerned stakeholders hold a strong belief that the fund has helped in preventing all forms of malnutrition by improving children’s access to nutritious, safe, affordable, and sustainable diets.
Irrespective of the critics’ opinions, UNICEF warns that although numerous factors can lead to malnutrition, the immediate causes, especially among children, are inadequate diet and disease.
The fund insists that poverty among the poorest strata of society has tremendously made it difficult to prevent malnutrition and it has provided strategic approaches to deal with the development.
Sharing similar sentiments, Dr. Abubakar Joshua of the Department of Community Medicine and Public Health, Gombe State University, admits that UNICEF’s focus on prevention rather than cure is apt.
“Fortification and diversification of food for purpose of bringing different varieties to supplement the deficiency that children may experience are good.
“People have food at home but do not know the right combination to give their children for healthy growth.
“If a child becomes malnourished, he is at risk of developing many complications, such as cataracts, which will eventually make him blind.
“If your child becomes blind, you have killed his dream; he will not forgive you for the rest of his life,’’ he warns.
Commending UNICEF’s intervention, Mrs. Samir’s Yakubu, a mother of 11 children in Kolorgu Primary Health Care Centre in Kaltungo Local Government Area, notes that she exclusively breastfed her baby for six months and subsequently followed it up with UNUCEF’s recommended complementary feeding.
“I was taught how to prepare nutritious food for my baby using available local food items in my community like beans, pumpkin, soy beans, and orange-flesh sweet potatoes introduced to us by UNICEF.
“The new development has impacted positively on the lives of my babies, as you can see the stark contrast in health between my exclusively breastfed daughter and her non-breastfed sister,’’ she explains.
All in all health managers note that many children have died as a result of health complications due to malnutrition due to the ignorance of their handlers.
They advise that all hands must be on deck in the fight against malnutrition to save the lives of children by adhering critical health issues because “prevention is better than cure and a stitch in time saves nine’’.
