Civil Society Scaling-Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN) says malnutrition is responsible for one in every two death of children aged less than five years in Nigeria.
Sunday Okonkwo, programme manager for CS-SUNN, made the observation at the commemoration of this year’s World Breastfeeding Week in Abuja tagged “Breastfeeding, A key to sustainable development”.
He said the key message of the breast feeding week is to “raise awareness on issues that affect children.
CS-SUNN leads advocacy for a coalition, Partnership for Advocacy Child and Family Health (PACFaH) which pushes for better nutrition for children .
“If you look at the issue of malnutrition you will find out that Malnutrition is responsible for every 1 in 2 under five year child death in Nigeria,” said Okoronkwo.
The National Demographic and Health Survey shows 37 per cent of children under age five are too short for their age, 29 per cent underweight and 18 per cent too thin for their age or wasted.
But the National Strategic Plan of Action on Nutrition (NSPAN) 2014-2019, which provides a comprehensive and multi-sector approach to tackling the problem of malnutrition, is yet to be implemented.
“The NSPAN is a key document to scale up of nutrition in Nigeria, if implemented. We appeal to the governments to provide budgetary allocation for its implementation in the 2017 budget, with emphasis on child and adolescent nutrition and timely release of funds,” said Okoronkwo.
He added that if the NSPAN is fully implemented it will reduce up to about 20 percent malnutrition death by 2019.
UNICEF Nigeria, Nutrition Advocacy Specialist, Zakaria Fusheini, said, “As a country we have policies, so we need to ensure that these policies are implemented to the letter and also to ensure that within the first 1000 days of life for children which start from conception up to 2 years, children have all the nutrients that they need to grow optimally.”
The push is exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, and complementary feeding from six months onward.
Zakaria added that there is a need to reach out to mothers who are in the rural areas who don’t have access to such information.
Credit: dailytrust
