Clement Adeyi, Osogbo
A condition whereby the body does not get the normal amount of the vitamins, minerals and other necessary nutrients needed to build and maintain healthy tissues and organ functions for a healthy living is known as malnutrition.
This results from not eating enough foods that contain the proper vitamins, minerals and nutrients.
Children are most vulnerable to the condition.
Apart from weakness and poor growth that malnourished children suffer, another effect of malnutrition is micro nutrients deficiency.
Report has said that malnourished children risk stunted growth and mental retardation.
Nutrition experts have attributed physical and psychological stunting in children to malnutrition in their first 1,000 days of life.
According to them, inadequate nutrition in a child’s early days affects memory formation, attention span, ability to process information as well as development of his psychomotor skills.
Investigations confirmed that malnutrition comes with common signs and symptoms such as tiredness, longer duration of ability to recover from illness, infections, irritability, weak immune system, low body temperature, loss of fats higher risk of respiration failure, breathing difficulties among others.
Over the years, child malnutrition remains a silent killer due to different factors such as poverty, ignorance and lack of information and awareness on proper dieting.
According to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) report, the trending infant mortality in Nigeria is majorly due to child malnutrition. The report said two out of three children in Nigeria are malnourished, especially in poor families.
According to reports available to Daily Sun, child malnutrition has hit Osun children, especially the under-five-aged category.
This is despite Governor Rauf Aregbesola’s O’meals elementary school feeding programme.
Although the feeding programme has, to some extent, saved the beneficiary children from malnutrition, it can not be said to have been able to proffer absolute solution to the crisis, following the growing trend as reported by Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS) 2016-2017.
The report showed that the nutritional status of children below the age of five in the state has not improved.
Director of Community Health Services and Education at the Osun State Primary Health Care Development Board, Mr. James Oloyede, told Daily Sun that over 23 percent of under five children in the state were stunted (those that are too short for their age), while eight percent were in the underweight (wasting) category (those that are too thin for their age).
He expressed worries that such children might not be able to fulfil their full potentials in life due to low intelligent quotient (IQ), which is a result of child malnutrition.
He added that they were also vulnerable to diet- related diseases such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension in later years.
This has posed a serious concern for stakeholders, particularly nutritionists, health care providers and Unicef.
Daily Sun also gathered that the fifth Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS) conducted in 2016 and 2017 by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other key partners and presented by the Statistician-General of the Federation, Dr. Yemi Kale, indicated that child malnutrition in Nigeria had increased.
Investigations have also shown that thousands of families have lost their children to malnutrition due to lack of timely intervention for women and their babies who fall victims.
Acting Representative for UNICEF in Nigeria, Pernille Ironside, also lamented that child malnutrition under the age of five had worsened nationwide, with the northern states ranking highest.
He noted that affected children who are in the wasting category (children who are too thin for their age) increased from 24.2 perent to 31.5 percent, while those in the stunting category (children who are too short for their age) increased from 34.8 percent to 43.6 percent.”
Pernille said the MICS data was collected between September 2016 and January 2017 from 33,901 households in 2,239 enumeration areas across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
Investigations by Daily Sun showed that child malnutrition is common among the poorest of the poor who live from hand to mouth due to abject poverty. For them, there is no choice of diet. Therefore, balance diet does not make any meaning to them. They eat whatever meal is available to them and that is what they can afford to give to their children.
Mothers of child malnutrition victims who spoke with Daily Sun also attributed the case to poor economic conditions, poverty as well as government and relevant NGOs’ failure to extend interventions to the affected families.
Poised to address the problem in the state, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has collaborated with the state government to develop a five-year costed multi-sectoral strategic plan of action for nutrition.
The process was supervised by a UNICEF nutrition specialist, Mrs. Ada Ezeogu at a workshop in Ijebu-Jesa Town, Osun State, where the Director of Community Health Services and Education at the Osun State Primary Health Care Development Board, Mr James Oloyede, disclosed government’s commitment to reversing the ugly trend through the integrated multi-sectoral strategic plan of action.
According to him, the plan would identify priority areas such as nutrition of women of child bearing age as well as infant and young child feeding.
He said other priority areas include ensuring food security, micro nutrient deficiency control, treatment of severe acute malnutrition, nutrition in education and institutions, poverty reduction and recruitment as well as deployment of nutritionists to handle nutrition cases in the state.
Oloyede added that the state’s action plan on nutrition clearly outlined activities and assigned roles and responsibilities that would ensure its implementation.
A Public Health and Nutrition Programme Manager, Osun State Primary Health Care Development Board, Mr Izuchukwu Michael Offiaeli, told Daily Sun that an integrated strategic costed nutrition plan of action was being developed for the state for the period between 2018 and 2023.
He disclosed that top officials of ministries and agencies of Osun State Government were working together to produce a document that would showcase the commitments in financial investments in nutrition as well the roles and responsibilities of all the relevant sectors and stakeholders.
President of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria, Dr Bartholomew Brai, explained that the National Food and Nutrition Policy had a document that provides the framework for addressing the problems of food and nutrition insecurity in Nigeria.
He hailed Osun State Government for its efforts in checkmating malnutrition through a five-year costed multi-sectoral strategic plan of action for nutrition in line with the National Food and Nutrition Policy.
Unicef’s nutrition specialist, Ada Ezeogu, suggested some solutions to child malnutrition.
She urged mothers to pay adequate attention to the feeding of their babies, especially within the first two years of birth as children from 0-2 years are still undergoing a critical stage of growth and development that requires proper nutrition.
To be able to procure nutritious foods for their children, she urged mothers to make juice drinks from water melon, oranges, pineapples, apples etc for the children instead of giving them palp (ogi) consistently.
She also advised them to embark on exclusive breastfeeding of their babies within 30 minutes after birth to six months after which they could begin to feed them with meat, fish, eggs, nuts, legumes, fruits, milk and vegetables.
Ezeogu also called on government at all levels to include malnutrition intervention into all developmental programmes.
“Health budgets have to cover children diets to ameliorate child malnutrition challenges. Budget rights for children is imperative to guarantee proper child nutrition,” she stressed.
Mrs Funmi Shittu, a nutritionist at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Teaching Hospital, Osogbo, said: “In the face of the abject poverty in the land which is majorly responsible for child malnutrition in many homes, parents should avoid giving birth to many children to make feeding easy for them.
If you have one or two, you will be able to feed them well and there wont be a case of malnutrition.”
A dietician at the hospital, Mrs Adenike Akinyemi, attributed child malnutrition to multiple children such as twins, triplets quadruplets, especially in a poor family that may not be able to give them proper diet.
She said until governments introduced interventions through relief materials for the less privileged, the child malnutrition awareness they embark upon would not make any meaning.
She, however, urged mothers to give proper attention to their children through exclusive breastfeeding.
“Exclusive breastfeeding is the ultimate because it begins 30 minutes
after birth till six months. After this period, he or she would be
able to eat a bit of solid foods like amala, yam, fish, rice, beans,
fruits etc and may not be affected by malnutrition,” she said.