Kebbi communities battle with malnutrition
Kebbi State has geared up efforts towards tackling the many cases of malnutrition with enhanced enlightenment.
Malnutrition among children in the country has been a serious matter begging to be tackled. The case in the northern part of the country is more precarious due to the nonavailability of good health facilities or where they are obtainable, are not readily patronized.
According to the UNICEF June 2016 report on child malnutrition, 2. 5 million children are suffering from severe malnutrition in Nigeria.
Kebbi State is one of the states battling malnutrition. As such, health officials in parts of the state have been on an aggressive enlightenment and awareness campaign to educate nursing mothers and pregnant women on how to check the increasing rate of malnutrition. Malnutrition has caused the death of many children and newborns, particularly in the rural areas of the state.
It was really gloomy during a visit to the Maternal and Child Healthcare Centre at Fada, Argungu, according to our correspondent. Daily Trust on Sunday observed that several children between the ages of one and two were in poor condition occasioned by poor feeding. The facility was chaotic.While some of the malnourished children were being attended to by nurses and other health officials, some mothers were weeping just as others looked on dejectedly.
One of the nursing mothers, Hafsat Lawali, was holding firmly to her one-year-old baby, Zakari. She looked worried and unhappy about the condition the baby who was emaciated. He had a big head, protruding stomach and was unable to stand. In tears, she told our correspondent that she breastfed her son for three months. She said she stopped breastfeeding him after that and started feeding him with solid foods and local milk. According to her, it was after a while that she noticed the child was looking unwell.
Another mother, Hadiza Muhammed, also narrated how her two-year-old child, Lukman became malnourished.
“When I gave birth to him, my breasts could not discharge enough milk for over a month. Later when it started coming, I only breast-fed him for two months. Sometime ago I noticed that he was looking pale, weak and emaciating. I didn’t know it was because I didn’t breast fed him enough,” she said.
Fatimah Abbas is the grandmother of Zainab Abdullahi, a two-year-old baby suffering from severe malnutrition. She said, “I took the baby from my daughter when she became pregnant while Zainab was barely a year old. The baby developed this condition a few some months ago.”
The Nutrition Focus Person at the Fada Health Centre,Haruna Abdulkadir, told Daily Trust on Sunday that most children affected are from the rural areas, pointing out that many of them usually give birth at home so they lack knowledge on child initiation to breast feeding and other hygienic issues.
Besides, he said, many of them are ignorant of the malnutrition cases and don’t go to hospital for ante-natal. He, however, said there was increasing awareness as some women now come from different villages to attend meeting with them.
“We have seen changes in some of the children with severe cases of malnutrition”, he said.
According to him, town criers at the ward development centres are now being used to pass the message on exclusive breast feeding and early initiation to breast feeding.
“We have charts to educate nursing mothers and pregnant women on how to feed their newborns. We always warn them that once they mix water with breast feeding their children will become malnourished,” Abdulkadir noted.
He said that health officials have been counseling pregnant women on ante-natal care (ANC), exclusive breast feeding, complementary feeding from zero to age 2, personal hygiene and hand washing among others for the safety of their babies. “Whenever they come here we always give them some Ready to use Foods (RTF) that is rich in vitamin A for free for their malnourished children. We do that based on the weight of the children. It is a combination of Soya beans, groundnut, milk, sugar and other essential nutrients,” the Focus Person pointed out.
He added that a child needs to be breast-fed 12 times daily for a healthy growth. However, he said, many of the mothers don’t do that and “that is responsible for the malnutrition cases”. According to him, to be sure the mothers understand what is taught and make use of the advice, whenever they come back for meetings, they are asked to narrate what they had been told about child’s feeding.
Abdulkadir said: “I think they have started making use of our advice and from what we have seen so far, the situation is changing. We are already teaching them how to prepare the food supplements using soya beans, millet, milk, sugar, groundnut, maize or guinea corn and so on.”
During a visit to the palace of the Emir of Argungu, Alhaji Samaila Muhammed Mera,he noted that the issue of malnutrition among children in the state has to do with education and awareness.
“We produce a lot of food that can take care of malnutrition in Kebbi. For example our people produce a lot of watermelon but they hardly eat it. The fishermen hardly take some of their catch to their families. Some people don’t allow their children to eat eggs for some reasons. It is all about education,” he said.
The emir said he looked forward to seeing some awareness posters used in the past.
“I will always remember the poster of a Dan-Kwaya (drug addict) who looked like a mad man. It was so scary that as a child you wouldn’t want to go near anybody that was taking drug, let alone use it. We need to change the ways through which we pass information to communities on issues that affect the people, particularly children. It must be different from those coming from abroad so that it can make meaning to the people and address the issue it intends to,” he added.