Tag Archives: Half

Breast Feeding Week: Malnutrition Behind Half Of All Child Deaths

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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

 

Boko Haram, ISIS Responsible For More Than Half Of World’s Deaths From Terrorism, Study Says

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The number of people killed globally in terrorist attacks jumped 80 percent last year to the highest level ever recorded, the Institute for Economics and Peace said Tuesday.

The Global Terrorism Index found that 32,658 people were killed by terrorists in 2014, up from the 18,111 fatalities of the previous year, the largest increase on record.

The study defines terrorism as “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation”.

Nigeria-based Boko Haram and the Islamic State group were responsible for more than half of the deaths, according to the study, which measures attacks, deaths and damage from terror attacks in 162 countries.

“Terrorism is gaining momentum at an unprecedented pace,” said Steve Killelea, the executive chairman of the Institute of Economics and Peace, which produces the study.

The increase followed a 61 percent rise in 2013.

The study found that terrorism was highly concentrated, with the five countries ofAfghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria accounting for 78 percent of deaths last year.

Iraq was the worst affected with 9,929 deaths from terrorism — suffering both the highest number of attacks and the most fatalities from terrorism ever recorded by a country.

The biggest rise in fatalities from terrorism however was in Nigeria, which saw an increase of over 300 percent in deaths to 7,512.

Credit: Vanguard