The Kaduna State Government says it has strengthened the provision of nutrition services in healthcare facilities to ensure access throughout the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic lockdown.
The State Nutrition Officer, Mrs Ramatu Musa, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kaduna on Friday.
Musa particularly said that provision of Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) and Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) services were ongoing in health facilities across the state.
She added that nutrition counselling was equally ongoing on how to use accessible and affordable food items to prepare food that has the required nutrients and minerals for children and pregnant mothers.
“Mothers and caregivers are also being counsel on how to prepare food to minimise loss of nutrients from cooking,” she added.
She also said that healthcare providers and nutrition focal persons in local government areas were recently trained under the World Bank-supported Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN) project.
She said that the officials were trained on how to ensure uninterrupted provision of nutrition services and effective distribution of nutrition commodities to mothers in facilities.
The ANRiN Project Manager in the state, Dr Zainab Muhammad-Idris, also explained that the training was necessary to equip the healthcare providers with needed skills for effective service delivery.
Muhammad-Idris said the training was designed for the healthcare providers to have basic information and knowledge of how to carry out nutrition services intervention at the facility level.
She said that the effort was to ensure continuous support to health facilities to provide uninterrupted nutrition services for women and children.
“We trained the officials on effective counselling on IYCF to ensure that parents and caregivers have necessary information to sustain the right nutrition practices throughout the COVID-19 crisis.
“The focus is on early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding and adequate complementary feeding so it could continue among the appropriate age groups.
“The project also supported the provision and distribution of nutrition commodities like iron, folic acid and Sulfadoxine–pyrimethamine (SP) for pregnant mothers attending ANC in facilities providing nutrition services.
“Our support also ensures integration of services like child spacing for mothers and immunisation for children is up-to-date and complete and are equally provided in the facilities,” she said.
She added that the training incorporated preventive measures of COVID-19, to ensure that healthcare providers observe key preventive measures while attending to their clients.
She identified the key preventive measures as respiratory hygiene, hand hygiene, social and physical distancing and use of face mask. (NAN)