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From Obinna Odogwu, Awka
Executive Secretary, Enugu State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (ESPHCDA), Dr. Ifeyinwa Ani-Osheku, has given reasons government invested in the child nutrition fund. He spoke recently with Daily Sun.
Excerpts:
What motivated Enugu State Government to invest in the child nutrition fund?
At the turn of the administration of Dr. Peter Mbah, one of his key motivations is to ensure that we have zero poverty in Enugu State.
It is not just the reduction but also zero poverty; and that’s because he recognises that the major drivers of the economic growth in Enugu State lie on human capital development. By now, we know that its no news that he intends to raise the baseline of what he met which is N4.4 billion to over N30 billion. So in order to do this, he needs to ensure that the people that he is leading are healthy.
When the conversation on some of our nutritional values began to trickle in, in conversation with United Nations Children Funds (UNICEF) we looked at it jointly; and I must say that we would like to extend our most sincere appreciation to His Excellency because he didn’t just delegate, he did that in person.
It was not in proxy. He sat down with the entire nutrition team where we made a presentation as to the state of our nutritional status in Enugu State. It was there that we noticed that over 178,000 of the children in Enugu State were at the risk of stunting. And that is a very disastrous statistic. That puts the value at about 15.8 per cent. So, what that means is that almost two out of every 10 children in Enugu State are stunted.
Was that why the governor approved the release of the state’s counterpart funding to the child nutrition funds?
If it’s just stunting alone, just their physical characteristic, that would be acceptable. But in Enugu, it is not acceptable because you may also have heard that 33 per cent of the entire state budget for the past three years has been dedicated to the educational sector.
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So, what this means is that Enugu State has taken the bold step to ensure that we have the smart green schools that ensure that children from the age of year three are enrolled into those schools and are exposed to all sorts of advanced learning modalities robotics, intellectual training gadgets, and all.
And one of the questions the governor posed is, if our children don’t have the right cognitive ability, how will they be able to benefit from all that the state government is spending? And that was why when we discussed the state’s counterpart funding to the child nutrition fund, he did not hesitate. Not only did he make the pronouncement, he released the sum of 100,000 USD to complement what UNICEF had already put down, making it a total of 200,000 USD that was used to procure various nutritional supplements.
Among them is a ready-to-use therapeutic food, which is used for the treatment of severe and acute malnutrition. The second one is the provision of the SQLNS, which is used for the prevention of malnutrition. And the last one is the multi-micronutrient supplement which ensures that our pregnant women do not suffer from anaemia because baseline statistics already show that quite a number of our women that are in the pregnancy age group already have baseline anaemia. So these were the things that pushed His Excellency, Dr. Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, to invest in the child nutrition fund.
How many women and children would you be able to cover with this intervention?
This is a programme that is just kicking off. And that’s why this particular programme that we have all gathered for is very important. So through the aid of the combined funding, right now, for the ready-to-use therapeutic food, when we calculated the number of children it would be able to get to, we will be able to treat about 900 children who already have the severe acute malnutrition with what is already on ground.
Then, for preventing malnutrition, what we have on ground can adequately cater for about 25,000 children. And then for our pregnant women, what we have on ground can adequately cater for about 33,000 women. However, we must also ensure accountability because what we want is for these commodities to get to the last mile.
And with the additional support of the US Government through this US Nutrition Grant through the UNICEF office, they’ve been able to provide that additional support that ensures that we engage relevant stakeholders; relevant stakeholders from the agricultural sector that ensure that together we can fashion out some sustainable measures because you can agree with me that we cannot continue purchasing these modified diets.
We need to get back to the grassroots to find out how do we grow these nutritionally balanced meals and that’s why we are also partnering with the Ministry of Poverty and Human Capital Development to ensure that we empower our women so that they are able to take charge of their finances as well as the nutritional needs of their families in addition to the Ministry of Information that would also help which obviously is the press because we need you also to help us take this information to the grassroots; to the communities where it is needed.
So, with the availability of all of these products, our people also need to understand how they can apply it. So with the start of this programme which is being funded through the US grant by ensuring that all the relevant stakeholders, not just from Enugu State but from Benue State get to understand what this grant is about, what it will avail us, together we will work out what our actionable plans are; our work plan, and then we go back to our various states and we start implementing it. And while we are implementing it, we are also going to be gathering data to show that we have made good use of what has been provided for us.
