By Abdallah el-Kurebe, Editor
The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has called for increased and timely release of budgetary allocation to nutrition in Nigeria in 2019.
The Programme Manager in charge of Health at CISLAC, Ms Chioma Kanu made the call on Tuesday in Abuja at a two-day Social Media Conference on Sustainable Funding for Nutrition in Nigeria.
With priority target states for nutrition intervention, including Jigawa, Niger, Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Bauchi, Sokoto and Gombe, CISLAC is currently implementing a project to influence budgetary process with support from the UNICEF in northern Nigeria.
Kanu said according to a report that Nigeria was one of the 20 countries responsible for 80 percent of global child malnutrition, while about 45 percent of all under five deaths were attributed to under nutrition, including low birth weight, which was a significance of maternal under nutrition.
“Approximately, 2.5 million Nigerians under five years are affected by malnutrition. This accounts for one tenth of the global total, meaning that nearly a thousand Nigerian children dies of malnutrition-related causes,’’ she said.
Kanu stressed that the advocacy was to influence state and federal budget process for improved nutrition allocation, release and accountability in Northern Nigeria. “We want to see increased domestic investment for the scale up of Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) in target states.”
While appealing to CSOs and the media to track and report in order to create awareness of prevailing budgetary allocation to nutrition in the country,
According to her, UNICEF, like most donor agencies, were moving from service delivery orientation to advocacy, leaving the government to take full ownership of the health sector and reform the system for accountability, especially in the north.
Kanu also encouraged health professionals, Ministries, Departments and parastatal Agencies (MDAs) to increase nutrition awareness in Nigeria.
On his parts, Dr Chris Isokpunwu, the Head of Nutrition, Federal Ministry of Health, said that malnutrition was not inadequacy of food, but inadequacy of one or more nutrients in a meal.
“Malnutrition can be under nutrition where the weight of a child is less than recommended and over nutrition where the weight is higher than required at a particular age,’’ Isokpunwu said.
He said the nutrition situation in Nigeria was a public health concern, adding that the major drivers were the rising population, failure of governance and gender inequality.
Isokpunwu, however, urged that the Federal Government to put appropriate policies and guidelines in place to tackle cases of health and malnutrition.
The nutritionist urged Nigerians to practice good hygiene, consume diets that contained all classes of nutrients and practice exclusive breastfeeding for feeding mothers.
