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Abdulrazaq Mungadi, Gombe
Speaker of the Bauchi State House of Assembly, Abubakar Sulaiman, has threatened to declare a state of emergency on severe acute malnutrition in the state.
Sulaiman made the declaration at a retreat organised by the International Society for Media in Public Health (ISMPH) and other partners on malnutrition for the lawmakers in Gombe.
The state nutrition officer, Malam Abubakar Saleh, revealed the true situation on SAM in the state, saying that statistic showed 94 death in the over 23 thousand children admitted in 2019. . “The situation is seriously alarming hence we will do something about it”., he assured.
He assured that the house will engage the state ministry of health with a view to addressing the bottleneck impeding efforts to tackle the issue in the state.
“We will have a round table discussion with them to point out what the bottleneck is so that we as the legislators will do something and turn around the situation”.
According to Malam Saleh the state nutrition officer had in a presentation disclosed that in 2019 a total of 23,133 children were admitted out of which 22,133 recovered and a total of 94 deaths mainly children were recorded in the state.
He added that a total of 311 cases could not be recovered while 84 were transferred to a secondary health facility as a result of medical complications and that a total of 1,266 defaulted the treatment: “We have no record of their situation”.
Saleh further revealed that the state is currently out of stock of the Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) used to revive SAM children. He said as a result over five thousand SAM children face the risk of dying in the state.
