How mothers suffer to enroll children in malnutrition programme in Katsina
Rakiya Umar is a mother of eight. She treks about 12 kilometres from Gidan Kaji village to Bugaje Community Health Centre in Jibia Local Government Area of Katsina State to attend the weekly Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) programme.
She was lucky to have her daughter, Aisha Umar, 26-months-old enrolled at the centre.
However, Binta Aliyu spends close to N300 weekly to get to the centre. She has in the last four weeks been trying to get her son Alkasim registered but was told the Ready To Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), used mainly in the treatment is not adequate and can’t be registered. Her son faces an uncertain future.
Daily Trust found out at the center that close to 80 new women thronged the community health centre weekly to enroll their kids. Women pass the night in the community health centre to beat others in the chance to get their kids enrolled.
It was a similar story at Kaita Community Health Centre were records at the center showed that in the last six months, about 3,270 new cases were registered. So far, four have died as result of lack of RUTF and many more are at risk.
Maryam Idris was among the few lucky ones whose sevenmonth-oldchild was enrolled, and she said that it was God and the RUTF that saved her from losing her child.
The state nutrition score card is disturbing and alarming as out of 278,079 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition across the state, treatment is only presently being offered in only 47 CMAM health facilities in nine out of the 34 LGAs of the state.
Also the recently released National Nutritional Health Survey , 2016, showed that Katsina State is ranked second behind Kano with the highest number of children with malnutrition, with about 951,451 children.
The survey also revealed that Katsina with 11.4 percent is the 3rd highest in burden of acute malnutrition among children of ages between 6-59 months in the country. About 278,079 children were recorded in this category.
On prevalence of maternal acute malnutrition, Katsina is second with 16.8 percent and among the 11 states recording above national average. About 156,940 women are malnourished and giving birth to malnourished children.
The report also showed that the state is among the lowest in the country with less than 10 percent of women practicing Exclusive Breast Feeding (EBF).
It has been observed that commitment from the state government with regards to release and cash backing to support activities on nutrition were not forth coming. Although the state has created a nutrition budget line with about N350m so far accumulated in it, cash backing due to government bureaucracy wasn’t available.
International Development Partners like UNICEF and Save the Children have been running the community management of acute malnutrition centres but their efforts is declining especially with counterpart funding not coming from government.
At present there is no programme in the state on promotion of dietary diversification for consumption of minimum adequate diet by children under-5 just as absence of any social safety protection programme such as cash transfer for the poor for improvement of nutritional status of children under-5 in the state.
The Promotion of Infant and Young Child Feeding for prevention of malnutrition is currently being implemented in only nine out of the 34 LGAs in the state just as Vitamin A supplementation, Iron folate and deworming are currently being implemented with supplies provided fully by donor partners.
Also, there is no Early Child Development and Women empowerment programme targeted towards nutrition in the state.
UNICEF Katsina/ Kano field officer, Padmavathi Yedla stressed the need to work together to forge a common ground on malnutrition in the state.
When contacted, the Special Adviser of Budget in the state , Abdullahi Imam whose office supervises the nutrition program admitted that there were some challenges in the past but that they have now been sorted out.
He said, Five year development plan was being worked out with UNICEF to ensure a smooth and uninterrupted collaboration adding that “any well meaning person cannot close his eyes to the plight and conditions of the children at the CMAM centres.”
On why he is always seen as the bottle neck to nutrition, Abdullahi said people do not seem to understand the workings of government especially regarding finances, adding that there were procedures that must be followed for proper documentation. a