Malnutrition, deadly scourge attacking Nigerians

BY ADA DIKE

Many children and pregnant women in Nigeria currently face acute malnutrition due to high cost of foodstuffs.

The problem is nationwide. For instance, a woman fainted in Lagos on Tuesday this week, because she didn’t eat food for one half days.

The prices of yam, beans, garri and other foodstuffs are expensive in the markets these days, couple with the scarcity of money. So, many are finding it difficult to feed with any kind of food twice in a day. One woman said nobody cares whether the diet is balanced or not, that she needs food.

A widow called Iya Burns in her early 40s has developed acute headache because they find it difficult to feed.

She and her 10 children plus two grandchildren live in Ayobo, Lagos, where she cleans family’s compound twice in week and receives N5,000 per month. Three of her daughters do menial jobs and collect meager salaries too which they use to survive with.

They usually share N50,00 to each child in the morning and N5,00 every afternoon to them to buy biscuits, then cook spaghetti which does not satisfy them in the evening.

The United Nations Children Emergency Funds (UNICEF) defined malnutrition as more than lack of food. The organization further describe it as a combination of factors: insufficient protein, energy and micro-nutrients, frequent infections or disease, poor care and feeding practices, inadequate health services, and poor water and sanitation.

The organization further explained that UNICEF Nigeria puts a lot of priority on nutrition. In 2022, the organization said estimated 37 percent of children under the age of five suffered from stunting due to chronic malnutrition. “Overall, a well-balanced and healthy nutritional diet is of paramount importance in developing children,” they stated.

Saturday Times gathered that many hospitals in the Northeast have many malnourished children, with millions suffering from food insecurity amidst conflict, inflation, and climate shocks.

Statistics stated that over 4.4 million children and 600,000 breastfeeding mothers are struggling with acute malnourishment.

It’s on this note that a civil society, Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria, came up with different strategies to tackle malnutrition.

At a recent Legislative retreat organised by the Civil Society-Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria, Permanent Secretary, Niger State Planning Commission, Ramatu Umar said: “We’ve changed the narrative and made a significant impact on reducing malnutrition in the state, but, there’s more work to be done.

Nutrition is the foundation that supports human capital development. We’re proud of gatherings like this, which bring together legislators to focus on this crucial issue. We remain optimistic that nutrition will be prioritized and continue to improve.”

In another development, an organization, Medecins Sans Frontieres also known as Doctors Without Borders, has revealed that malnutrition cases at MSF Nilefa-Keji facility in Maiduguri, Borno State have surged immensely, forcing their teams to implement emergency measures.

“Our malnutrition facility in Nilefa-Keji is now exceeding its capacity by 150 percent.New patients and their caregivers are now being housed on mattresses between the wards.

“Last week, we treated 344 malnutrition patients, with a mortality rate of seven percent, mostly children under five years old. “MSF projected such a peak in July. Thus, this is unexpected and worrisome as MSF and Ministry of Health facility is already running at full capacity.

“A similar scenario is playing out in some parts of the North where our teams are working. MSF calls on actors to respect their pledges to support health facilities in the region.

“In May, our intensive therapeutic feeding facility in Maiduguri, Northeast Nigeria, admitted 2,096 patients with severe acute malnutrition (this is twice as much as we admitted in May 2023). The surge is unprecedented and our other facilities across Northern Nigeria are recording similar trends.”

They disclosed that MSF Medical Director, Dr. Catherine Van Overloop visited Maiduguri where Nursing Activity manager, Tumba Musa explained the impact this had on the team.

So, MSF called for secured humanitarian aid and increased preventative efforts from aid actors and authorities to better fight malnutrition.

Doctors Without Borders stipulated steps to take in tackling acute malnutrition in Northern Nigeria which they said require preventive and curative steps.

These include: “Strengthening healthcare facilities to diagnose and treat malnutrition effectively.

“Reinforcing vaccine programmes that can help stave off vaccine-preventable diseases, increasing access to nutritious food through agricultural initiatives and food distribution programmes, and improving water and sanitation situation.

Speaking on the topic: “Malnutrition in Nigeria, fortification as a strategy for improving nutrition indices,” Dr. Kanalio Y. Olaloku of Nestle Nutrition Institute, Central West African region stated that food fortification and supplementation remain the primary sources for delivering key micronutrients to at risk population.

She further explained that malnutrition generally refers to poor intake of food which may be an excess consumption of food (overnutrition) or inadequate nutrients consumption (undernutrition).

Stressing on the micronutrients deficiency, she said it results from inadequate intake of minerals and vitamins such as vitamin A, iodine and iron. “It’s the most common around the world, particularly in children and pregnant women.

For children, it leads to low weight, stunted growth, anaemia, increases risk of morbidity, inhibit economic growth, limits education potentiality and compromises overall health well being,” she said.

Olaloku pointed out that most children affected by malnutrition are the ones mostly in conflict zones like Northeast and Northwest of Nigeria. “Conflicts, insecurity, violence and displacement contribute to malnutrition,” she enthused.

She defined food fortification as “the practice of deliberately increasing the content of one or more micronutrients namely vitamins and minerals in a food or condiment to improve the nutritional quality of the food supply and provide a public health benefit with minimal risk to health as well as increasing the nutritional content of staple foods.

The addition of micronutrients can help to restore the micronutrient content lost during processing.”

According to her, food fortification increases nutritional quality.