At seven months, baby Ntieno Abasi looks more like a three month-old baby. Although she is recovering gradually, the tell tale signs of malnutrition are still visible in her. Apart from the obvious stunting, she cries most of the time and her skin looked pale. She is certainly far from healthy. Ntieno is one of the six malnourished children currently receiving intervention at Calabar General Hospital. Looking frail and weak, she nibbled at her grandmother’s flabby breast, which serves more as a toy, not being able to bring out any breast milk. She lost her mother at birth so she never had any breast milk.

 

According to the State Nutrition officer, Mrs. Regina Adie, Ntieno Abasi could have died if she had not been discovered during the state’s nutritional exercise at the last maternal and child week. She told National Mirror that poverty and poor feeding caused Ntieno abasi’s condition.

 

“This baby was not given breast milk at all, and you know the importance of breast milk”, she said. At the ward, six malnourished children from odukan and Bakasi LGA were also receiving malnutrition intervention. “During our Maternal and Child week, all mothers are mobilized to the Centre, where we access the children for malnutrition. It is during this nutritional screening that we identified these children and brought them here for treatment. We have 12 malnourished children also receiving treatment at Ikom LGA; four are severely malnourished and eight mildly malnourished but we cannot bring them here because of distance. We have a facility there that can manage them”, she further explained. Dr. Adie said that Cross River state has taken several positive measures to contain the growing cases of malnutrition.

 

One of such measures, she said, is the investment in regular screening of mothers and the newborn babies through the states maternal and newborn child health programme, adding that the state has been able to identify and control the rate of malnutrition in children through such exercise.

 

“As its contribution to eradicating this silent health crisis in children, Cross River State government has been settling all the medical bills and feeding of the patients, including their mothers.”

 

She disclosed that the state government has also embarked on procurement of F75 and F100 food supplements to support the nutritional needs of the affected children at the cost, which the state government has been bearing.

 

One of the mothers whose child was at the facility, Ruth Atibo, is hopeful that her daughter Ruth, would recover enough to walk again. At the moment, three-year-old Ruth cannot walk due to conditions caused by malnourishment. Except for her protruding stomach, Ruth’s body had shrunk to that of a tiny new born baby with hair that is now pale gold and scanty. She lay in her mother’s arm looking weak and pale.

 

 

The malnutrition story is not just peculiar to calabar. In Nigeria, about 500,000 children die from malnutrition every year, and out of those that survive, one in three will be underweight while one in 5 stunted, Head Nutritionist, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr. Chris. Isokpunwu, disclosed during the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, malnutrition workshop which was  held at Calabar, Cross River State recently.

 

Based on this, Isokpunwu says Nigeria, needs about N200 billion to address its nutritional deficiency in the next five years,

 

“Investment in nutrition must improve. Government has put in place adequate plans to deal with the situation, and this is contained in the country’s strategic plan on nutrition, which will soon be launched. This will require about $918 million over a period of five years for us to achieve the set target”, he said.

 

In his presentation, child nutrition specialist from UNICEF, Arjan de Wagt, revealed that malnutrition is associated with 55 per cent of child mortality in Nigeria.

 

He said this is the reason why childhood killer diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, measles and others thrive more in the country despite medical interventions.

 

According to him, one in every five children are stunted in Nigeria, while two out of every three children are not being fed properly and these situation has contributed to high infant and child mortality.

 

Aside child mortality, he said the impact of malnutrition is felt all over the nation with increased low weight babies, low weight and height in adolescent, early pregnancy, child growth failure, low intelligence and chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.

 

Arjan noted that 13 per cent of child death would be averted if 90 per cent of mothers exclusively breastfed their infants for the first 6 months, and another 6 per cent of child death would be averted if mothers provide adequate and timely complementary feeding from 6-24 months.

 

By: FRANKA OSAKWE

National Mirror