Some key stakeholders in public health have decried that malnutrition is still highly prevalent in Nigeria with women and children being the most affected due to poor access to basic micro nutrients.
The stakeholders, speaking on Thursday at a workshop on public health by Vitamins Angels, pointed out that poverty, lack of functional primary health care centres across the country, illiteracy and poor access to multiple micronutrient supplements were some of the key factors deepening malnutrition in the country.
Francis Ohanyido, a public health expert and country director, Vitamins Angels, speaking at the workshop in Abuja, noted that Nigeria had been identified as the poverty capital of the world, which had put millions of people in a space where they cannot eat quality food, and as a result a lot people were malnourished.
He said despite efforts of Vitamins Angels, in collaboration with its 144 partners in supporting government expand access to micronutrients, especially in low income countries, the challenges were still enormous.
“Our Primary Health Care (PHC) system is not doing its work, we hope that the new Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) will prompt states to strengthen PHCs because that’s where the problem is, if they are working these challenges will not be there,” he said
He expressed concern that women and children tend to bear the brunt of the menace as women were often forced to go through pregnancy with inadequate or optimal level of nutrition, which might cause complications during pregnancy, while death, stunted growth, poor response to diseases were some consequences of malnutrition among children.
“The recent demographic and health survey report shows that malnutrition is still a major problem in Nigeria. This is a critical problem that people tend to overlook. For example, if a malnourished woman experiences bleeding during delivery, it further worsens, because her body might not cope with,” he said.
He added, “It also affects her immune system response and makes it difficult for her system to ward off ordinary diseases, and because she is poorly nourished too, the quality of nutrition plays on the foetus.
“If women and children are not well nourished it can affect brain growth especially in the first 1000 days of the child and the quality of brain and output of that child later in life.”
The country director said in addition to ensuring that women and children get the right nutrients and vitamins, exclusive breastfeeding and deworming are also critical.
According to him, when children re not regularly dewormed, they end up competing with worms for nutrient, but deworming will ensure that whatever they take in terms of nutrient is optimally utilised by the body. He added that exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months will also boost a child’s resistance to diseases.
“Breast feeding is fundamental, because of the poor literacy level, people don’t know the value. A child who is not well breaded has about 11 times more chances of dying of diarrhoea,” he noted.
In an effort to curb the problem, Ohanyido called on government to develop policies that would favour exclusive breastfeeding, to encourage women to breastfeed.
He also urged government to ensure that health facilities have adequate micronutrients, because according to him, “even if the child is well breast fed, the environment has a large amount of soil transmitted worms which the child is exposed to.”
Also speaking, Onofiok Luke, a public health champion and speaker Akwa Ibom State House Assembly, while also harping on the importance of micronutrients urged the Federal Government to factor Multi-vitamin component into its school feeding programme.
According to Luke, “It is not just about providing food, but about the nutrient content of food provided. Do we have experts, nutritionist or dieticians who have looked at that?”
Luke also called for the need to expand the scope of the National Health Insurance Scheme to improve access to health care facilities especially among the indigent. He said most nursing mothers don’t can’t go to hospitals or health care centres because of huge financial burdens.
Bassey Amos, from the department of public health Bingham University also speaking, pointed out that the provision of Commodities such as albendezone, vitamin A, and multi vitamins are key in tackling malnutrition.
He informed that Vitamin Angels had over seven years supported the Federal Government through the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and states to reduce vitamin A deficiency. He said the organisation had also strengthened Bauchi and Sokoto states to set up their own primary health care agencies.
