Stakeholders decry worsening malnutrition among children

From the recent National Health Demographic Survey partially released, Nigeria has retrogressed on addressing malnutrition among children, a situation the Officials of National Nutrition Technical Working Group (NNTWG) have described as unfortunate and worrisome.

The NNTWG of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social welfare during its quarterly meeting in Abuja, said their major objective is to ensure that they reduce these indices of malnutrition among children in Nigeria.

The Chairman National Nutrition Technical Working Group, Ngozi Nnam, a Professor of Community, Public Health and Pediatric Nutrition at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka said they are going to seriously address malnutrition issues as the result from the recent survey is worrisome.

“Our major objective is to see that we reduce these indices on malnutrition to the barest minimum and we are going to seriously address the issues because the recent release shows that we have not really made progress rather we have retrogressed from the 37 per cent of stunting to 40 per cent stunting rate among children. It is not an interesting development and we are going to aggressively address that issue to see how in the next release we will make serious progress”, she said.

The Vice Chairman for National Nutrition Technical Working Group and the President Nutrition Society of Nigeria, Salisu Abubakar, Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry, Bayero University, Kano explained that the NNTWG is a technical working group that was inaugurated to coordinate the nutrition activities in the country.

He said that there are a lot of issues with malnutrition in the country and many people are working on it, from development partners to government agencies, state, and local government levels to the Office of the Vice President where the National Council on Nutrition is domiciled.

Professor Abubakar noted that there is need for strong coordination of the activities that are being conducted by different parties and the NNTWG is mainly coordinating the health sector component and it is based at the Federal Ministry of Health to coordinate all that they are doing to address the issue of malnutrition.

On the current malnutrition status of Nigeria, Professor Abubakar said “we have the National Health Demographic Survey which has been released partly and not officially launched, but the figures that we are having for stunting shows that we are getting worse.

“2018 was the last survey, and it says that at the level of the country, stunting was about 37 per cent which means that 37 per cent of the children at that time were stunted and it means they will not grow properly in terms of their brain development and general productivity, but when the recent survey was released, we now see it to jump to 40 per cent which means about 3 per cent increase”.

FHI 360 Alive/Thrive (A and T) is a prominent member of the NNTWG. A and T saves lives, prevents illness, and improves the health and wellbeing of mothers, children, and adolescents by using evidence-based approaches in collaboration with governments and other partners at the national, and community levels.

Some of FHI360 Alive & Thrive support to the government of Nigeria in combating malnutrition include supporting the Federal government through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to carry out the Multiple Micronutrient Supplements Landscape Analysis (MMS-LAN) across 18 states in Nigeria. Providing technical expertise in the development of the National Social and Behaviour Change Strategy (SBCC) strategy.