The United Nations Children’s Fund has placed emphasis on the prevention of malnutrition in six to 23 months old babies in Kalorgu, Kaltungo Local Government Area of Gombe State.
PERISCOPE NIGERIA reports that this focus is a sequel to the fact that malnutrition is a major cause of death for under five children in Gombe, North-East Nigeria.
Speaking, 21-year-old mother of eight months old baby, Sandra Bala, noted that since she was introduced to complementary feeding her daughter’s health has improved.
She confirmed to PERISCOPE NIGERIA that she has no regrets, “Since I introduced my baby to complementary feeding after six months of exclusive breastfeeding she has never fallen sick. I will introduce similar method to my children.”
Talatu Ferson, Facility Manager of Kalorgu Primary Health Centre, lauded UNICEF’s contribution to preventing malnutrition in children.
According to her, since the introduction of Small Supplements for the Prevention of Malnutrition in Early Childhood children’s Severe Acute Malnutrition has dwindled.z
She said, “Due to transportation many find it difficult to be here. Every week about 80 babies, alongside their parents come to the facility. There has been great improvement before the programme started we used to have plenty of Severe Acute Malnutrition here but with the SQ-LNS the number has reduced. So far we have over 70 per cent of improvement.”
On her part, Philomena Irene, UNICEF Bauchi Field Office Nutrition Specialist, while welcoming Arewa PUNCH to Kalorgu PHC in Kaltungo Local Government Area noted that the focus of her organisation has moved from treatment to prevention of malnutrition.
“Mothers were taught how to make various delicacies from it, especially by making flour out of the orange-fleshed sweet potatoes,” she added.
“Our focus now is to prevention malnutrition instead of waiting for the children to be severely malnourished before treatment. We hope to prevent, integrate nutrition to ongoing other sectoral programmes like Water Sanitation and Hygiene, Agriculture, Social Protection, Education programmes to scale up nutrition programmes in all LGAs,” she said.
While reiterating UNICEF to ensure well-being of children, Irene urged fathers to give maximum support to mothers and their babies adding, “we promote exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life we encourage mothers to continue breastfeeding from six months to two years and also add complementary food. Here we are promoting locally available food, home grown by the mothers. Currently, the mothers meet every month to pick a recipe that they will produce so that they can go home and do a replica while
Also, Ladi Abdullahi, LG facilitator in Kaltungo said they began by sensitising mothers on the importance of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes.
She added that from observation many mothers don’t make their food nutrient-densed.
