- * Six Million Nigerian Children Hit By Malnutrition Annually
By Mohammed Nasir Shuaibu (Bauchi State Correspondent)
A nursing mother of twins, Maimuna Sale from Kirfi local government area council of Bauchi State, disclosed how she was been forced by the husband's mother to give the children "baby twins" water because of threat to her children lives.
Speaking to NIGERIAN NEWSLEADER Newspaper Correspondent in an exclusive interview in Bauchi, Maimuna revealed how she was forced to stop exclusive breastfeeding for her children. She said "I was threatened that if I didn't give the children water, there is every tendencies that the children would die, and because of my fear not to loss my children, I started giving him the water".
She said she came for Tamuwa, meaning "she came to collect Malnutrition food that's Ready To Use Therepuetic Food (RUTF) supplements. We are poor people. My husband is a peasant farmer. He is not a government worker and we have seven children including these twins babies. That's why every week I come to collect the RUTF for my children because it is helping them. As you can see, before they're not healthy like this, but now their health condition is improving gradually",.
She appealed to the government to assist nursing mother's by providing enough RUTF foods supplements rather than the palliatives given with a view towards reducing the rate of malnutrition cases among children aged between 06-23.
Corroborating, a Nutrition officer at the Kofar Ran Primary Healthcare and Maternity Centre in Bauchi, Mrs Rahila Idi Umar, disclosed that the persistent rate cases of malnutrition among children between 06-23 months is increasing day by day in the centre, saying "we received nothing less than 100 new cases who suffered from acute or severe malnutrition every week in the facility.
Mrs Umar said, "most of the cases received were mostly coming from the rural communities and neighbouring villages where there is lack of access to the hospital for anti natal services.
The nutrition officer pointed out that the major reasons why the rate is growing in number was that most of the affected victims refused to embrace the exclusive breastfeeding, family planning system. While others were due to extreme poverty who could not afford to get nutritional foods for the mothers and the babies.
She explained that, the center has introduced a contribution scheme were they helped and assisted those in dire need of support whenever they come to for weekly visitation.
She further called on the government to priortize distribution of food items to the most affected victims especially Ready To Use Therepuetic (RUTF) to nursing mothers to reduce the rate of malnutrition cases among children aged between 06-23.
Earlier, the in charge of the center, Fatima Jafaru, said the Bauchi state government is trying in that regard especially now that the center has been selected among the three centres for treatment of malnutrition cases unlike before when the center usually referred major cases of acute and severe cases to the General Hospital, Kafin Madaki.
She said that with the selection of the center, it will now ginger the staff to tighten-up their belts towards improving services to the people particularly among nursing mother's and malnutrition treatments.
According to her, there is the need to address child malnutrition in the state as it has become one of the health challenges that causes high morbidity and mortality rates amongst children within the age bracket of 0–5 years.
NIGERIAN NEWSLEADER Newspaper Correspondent reports that Nigeria’s current population is projected at 228,597,211 as at May 27, 2024, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.
Out of that population, children within the age bracket of 0 – 14 constitute a whooping 58, 736,294 representing 41.83 percent. Unfortunately, that number was significantly undermined and whittled as a result of high mortality rate exacerbated by malnutrition and other child killer diseases.
Data has shown that in Nigeria, 37 per cent of children, or 6 million children, are stunted (chronically malnourished or low height for age), more than half of them severely. In addition, 18 per cent of children suffer from wasting (acutely malnourished or low weight for height), half of them severely.
A report by UNICEF also indicated that every hour, no fewer than 100 children under 5 years die of malnutrition which roughly approximates to the death of 2,400 children to malnutrition on daily basis occur.
Nigeria currently has the second highest burden of stunted children in the world, with a national prevalence rate of 32 percent of children under five. An estimated 2 million children in Nigeria suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), but only two out of every 10 children affected is currently reached with treatment.
Also, it is estimated that nearly 4.4 million children aged 0 – 59 months are suffering and will likely continue to suffer from acute malnutrition in the period of May 2023 – April 2024 in northwest and northeast Nigeria. This includes 1.04 million cases of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and 3.37 million cases of Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM). NNL
