CHIMA AZUBUIKE, Gombe
In a bid to stem the tide of malnutrition in Gombe state four Consortium which includes CISLAC, civil society legislative advocacy centre, ABF, Aisha Buhari Foundation, NHED, Network for Health Equity and Development and ISMPH, International Society of Media in Public Health have urged the Gombe state government on the sustainability of the state committee on food and nutrition.
According to Professor Ashir Garba, who is a professor of pediatrics and community pediatrics, University of Maiduguri, who offers technical support to NHED in the consortium in an interview with journalists on tuesday after the last meeting on state Committee on food and nutrition in Gombe.
He noted that since Children Investment Fund ended it project in 2012, government ownership in the combat of Severe Acute Malnutrition has been dwindling.
He said the idea now is for local consortium to take the lead which is born out of the necessity to increase government involvement and to ensure ownership and sustainability of Nutrition intervention.
“It is donor driven and it is not sustainable and it is obvious from the intervention we are getting from UNICEF. it is basically run as a parallel and all parallel programmes have it issues with regards to duplication.
“The main target of NHED is to mainstream the management and prevention of Severe Acute Malnutrition into health system. To ensure funding comes from different sources not just donors but of course government taking the lead that will ensure efficiency and effectiveness of the intervention rather than so much wastage like we have.
“We conducted baseline test in (9) nine northern states and we discovered there is no structures and department that will ensure sustainability that informed our intervention interms of advocacy, work plan, capacity building and support integration” he said.
Professor Garba added that nutrition is a multi sectoral problem which cuts across so many departments, and ministries. “If you are talking about Nutrition you will remember Agriculture, than even health civil society and the media has a role to play not just to push for funding but to enlighten people on measures to ensure there is ownership of intervention so that we can change the narrative”.