By Moses Emorinken, Abuja

Data from the National Nutrition and Health Survey (2018) indicates that not less than 2.6 million children under the age of five years in Nigeria are severely malnourished.

The data further revealed that the North East is the worst hit with Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) at 1.5 percent, with North West, North Central, South East, South West, and South South, having scores of 1.4, 1.0, 0.3, 0.5 and 0.5 respectively. The national average is one percent.

With the current socio-economic situation in the country, stakeholders in the health sector have warned that the figure may be worse now than what it was in 2018.

They therefore called on more public-private partnerships to achieve innovative financing for nutrition, in order to end the scourging reign of SAM in Nigeria.

The Country Director of Network for Health Equity and Development, Dr. Emmanuel Sokpo, made this known during a virtual media parley on the National Nutrition Conference organised by the International Society of Media in Public Health (ISMPH) and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), on Tuesday in Abuja.

He said, “Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is a life-threatening condition affecting over 2.6 million Nigerian children under the age of 5 years. Children with SAM are nine times more likely to die than well-nourished children, are more likely to be sick, and it reduces their cognitive ability.

“More than 10 percent of household earnings are lost due to poor productivity, increased health costs. Also, only there have been only 672,000 admissions out of the 2.6m affected children nationwide.

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“Data from the National Nutrition and Health survey of 2018 shows that the North East still has the highest score for SAM in the country at 1.5 percent, with North West, North Central, South East, South West, South South, having scores of 1.4, 1.0, 0.3, 0.5 and 0.5 respectively. The national average is one percent. The figure may be worse than what it is now.

“Ready To Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF) can effectively be used in treating SAM at the community level with a cure rate of 95 percent. It is something that is doable if there is political commitment and awareness created. As about one year ago, it costs N21,350 to cure a child with SAM within a treatment of 8 weeks RUTF, combined with 6 month treatment with other forms of treatment. It costs about N36,750 to cure a child with emergency state SAM.

“We need to find the procurement of RUTF, logistic management of the stock, staff emolument, training and supervision, provision of community management acute malnutrition sites, and coordination.”

In her address, the First Lady of Kebbi State, Dr. Zainab Bagudu, stressed on the need for more public and private partnerships to provide the much need funding to end malnutrition in the country.

She said, “Partnership between the public and private sectors is very important, and also looking at crowd funding, while we continue to advocate for increased budgetary allocation. Very soon there will be a launch of a program in October geared towards improving nutrition under the State Primary Health Care.”

The UNICEF Representative, Mr. Zakariah Fusheini, in his remarks, said, “In relation to malnutrition and nutrition in general, we need to increasingly get aware of what we call the triple burden of malnutrition – increasing stunting, wasting and underweight, which are normally looking at the physical condition of the individual, and also the micro-nutrient deficiency that is not visible, but has consequences on the child output.

“The last Global Nutrition Report indicates that for stunting in Nigeria, between the rich and poor, we are talking of 18 percent for the rich and 62 percent for the poor. So there is quite a wide gap in terms of equity.

“We have also realised that in terms of rural and urban, we have more of the rural population who are bringing out more children that are severely malnourished twice as compared to those in the urban areas. The disturbing situation is also the fact that for children who are born with low birth weight, they are three times likely to be acutely malnourished than those who are born normal. So we are calling for more investments in nutrition.”

The Executive Director of the International Society of Media in Public Health (ISMPH) Mrs. Moji Makanjuola, urged all stakeholders to synergize efforts to rid the country of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and to improved nutrition of children across the country.

The CIFF Representative, Dr. Mairo Mandara, added, “We must do whatever we have to do to make sure that the brain of our children are well developed because the world is no longer built on muscle power but on brain power. Having their brains well developed is the fundamental right of every child.”

In her remarks, the Chief Executive of Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN), Mrs Beatrice Eluaka, said, “The 2017 investment framework for nutrition estimated that an average of $7bn above existing levels of spending would be required over 10 years to finance and scale up evidence-based interventions to achieve the World Health Assembly target for stunting, anaemia, exclusive breastfeeding, and to scale up treatment for Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) by 2025. This is why we need to find innovative ways of financing nutrition in Nigeria.”