United Nations Children Fund UNICEF in collaboration with Kaduna State government have provided nutrition Services to about 145,000 children aged 0-59 months in Igabi Local government area within five days.
The Nutrition Specialist at the UNICEF field office in Kaduna, Mrs. Chinwe Ezeife, made this known on the fourth day of the health camp for integrated primary health care services and mass screening in Rigasa, Igabi Local Government.
Mrs Ezeife explained that, the exercise included antenatal services for women in the communities, targeted across 16 wards, and over 600 communities in the Igabi Local government.
She said the outreach was put together to further improve the health and nutrition status of children and women in the local government.
UNICEF field office in Kaduna, Mrs. Chinwe Ezeife
According to her, the initiative is borne out of the Tudun Biri incident of drone attack which as a result of that during the visit of Vice President Kashim Shettima to sympathize with the victims and he observed that most of the children were malnourished.
She, further said malnutrition cannot be talked about without other health indices including water, hygiene and sanitation, birth registration, antenatal services, immunisation, tetanus for pregnant women, and vitamin ‘A’ supplementation among others, which were observed to be poor.
“Following this, UNICEF with its special mandate of health and nutrition for women and children, in collaboration with the board, planned to strengthen the integrated primary health care services.
“We want to quickly establish the nutritional situation in Igabi LGA. Tudun Biri is just a community, whatever is happening there has a likelihood in other wards and settlements in the LGA because it is a homogeneous community”
Mrs Chinwe Ezeife also stated that, the health camp strategy had 116 health teams comprising six persons in each team, revealing that, among them, three people would provide health services and nutrition, while the others record child birth registration, water and hygiene practices.
She added that, they would provide antenatal services, counseling of children and pregnant women on appropriate infant and young child complementing feeding.
Mrs. Ezeife also said they use the opportunity to identify children who have not received any immunizations since birth, and pon diagnosis, these children would either be treated during the exercise or referred to higher facilities.
“We have seen many children who have been screened and found to be severely wasted. As we document them, we start them on treatment for severe wasting with Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF). Beyond today, they will continue visiting health facilities to continue their treatment.”
Deputy Director Public Health, Ministry of Health, Dr Abubakar Sadiq Idris.
In a remark , Deputy Director of Public Health, Kaduna State Ministry of Health, Dr Abubakar Sadiq Idris said
fight against malnutrition required collaborative effort of government, communities and development partners to tackle increasing cases of malnutrition in Kaduna State.
Dr Abubakar Idris noted that malnutrition was a serious issue not only in Kaduna state but Nationally where it had significant proportion for children particularly stunted.
“We have a coordinating body because we all know that malnutrition is not just a health issue but a multi-sectoral issue. The Ministry of Budget and Planning coordinates all the sectors in Kaduna State to secure funds to fight malnutrition, linking the ministries of health, education, finance, and the Budget and Planning Commission, including partners, in order to devise measures that will tackle malnutrition”.
According to him, Kaduna State has several policies that have been developed to provide effective health care services to infants and Young child as interventions to reduce the burden of malnutrition in the state.
“We have several interventions and programmes that are gear toward reducing the effects of malnutrition across the state”
“One of those key interventions is the through integrated mobile outreach especially in the remote and hard to reach communities to identify children with malnutrition to link them up with services .
“We have the highest number of malnourished children in Nigeria, Kaduna being the most third populated state in the country has the highest number of malnourished children”
Dr Abubakar Idris emphasized that, of effort are ongoing to address the challenges of malnutrition in the state
“As part of the children that we have be able to bring out, a significant number of them have actually being found to be malnourished and this is just a single intervention”
“We also have facilities set up to deliver integrated services targeting malnourished children across the state”
“We have treated thousands of children with malnutrition from the beginning of this year to this particular period to reached thousands of children through various interventions”
According to him, Igabi Local government is one of those Local governments that has high number of malnourished children, stressing that that was why the outreach focused on the communities that have a significant proportion of children with malnutrition.
Habiba Yusuf
Also, the Assistant Nutrition Focal Person of Igabi local government, Habiba Yusuf, said Ado Gwaram community in Rigasa has numbers of children aged from six months to five years suffering from malnutrition.
Habiba Yusuf further stated that, they recorded cases of children who were never immunised in their lives.
She attributed inadequate and lack of balanced diet and improper personal and environmental hygiene, poverty were some of the causes of malnutrition in the community.
Yusuf stressed the need for women to patronise health facilities and ensure good hygiene and intake of good food.
Some of the women who spoke with Radio Nigeria identify poverty as one of the major factory that led to their children malnourished.
Earlier, the Ward head of Ado Gwaram community in Rigasa, Haruna Sulaiman identified lack of knowledge on how the mothers will prepare local balance diet for children are the major factors contributing to the increasing number of malnourished children in the community.
He commended UNICEF and Kaduna State government for the service and called for regular free healthcare services in the community.
COV/AMINU DALHATU
