Moses Emorinken, Abuja
Wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, has vehemently condemned Nigeria’s perpetual dependence on the importation of RUTF to treat cases of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), especially among children under the age of five.
The first lady made this known Monday during a meeting with private sector investors and stakeholders, organised by the Aisha Buhari Foundation (ABF) and the Future Assured Programme, at the Villa in Abuja, to discuss the possibilities and potentials of domestic production of Ready-To-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF) to treat malnutrition.
According to her, “Nigeria has a population of over 200 million people; we cannot continue to depend on importing what we can source for locally. If Niger can have a RUTF plan, I see no reason why Nigeria should not have it. Even if our RUTF is not yet certified by the World Health Organisation (WHO), it is still saving the lives of children.
“Every Nigerian child should have a nutritious meal within the first 1,000 days of his or her life. We need the support and encouragement of the Federal Ministry of Health to make sure that our products are regulated right from within the country, and also to be guided on how to get it certified by the WHO.
“I remember two years ago that we had the ‘get involved’ component of the Future Assured programme, the UNICEF survey revealed that about half of a million children are likely to die within six months. This report gave me sleepless nights thinking about how I was brought up and what I am seeing today. I decided to come up with get involved in which we raised about $500,000 products and took it to Borno state and some other parts of Nigeria which saved so many children.
“We cannot continue importing RUTF. Sometimes it takes about six weeks to get it shipped to Nigeria and needing a lot of agencies to clear it. Before all these are done, many lives would have been lost. I think that it is high time we become the typical giant of Africa”.
Concerning the importation of sugar, which is part of the constituents for the local production of RUTF, Mrs. Buhari, who is also founder and chairperson of the ABF, said, “I was shocked to hear that we import sugar to Nigeria. I am from Adamawa state, and we used to have Savannah Company which is now either Dangote or some other company, and I am sure they still produce sugar.
“So, why do we have to import sugar into Nigeria, when we have a lot of Fulani roaming about with their cattle and being killed and them killing others for no reason. We need to bring them together to see how we can put them to work”.
She further added: “It is quite worrisome that after knowing the constituents of this wonder paste called the RUTF and importing it for about a decade now, we are yet to take ownership of this process by putting systems in place to ensure that it is always available and easily accessible”.
She therefore called on all private sector and stakeholders at the event to focus more on the long term impact of investing on new RUTF plants or the improvement of existing RUTF production plants in the country.
With respect to the raw materials needed for the local production of RUTF, only 2 per cent to 5 per cent of the materials are sourced locally; about 95 per cent of the remaining constituents are imported from other countries.
READ ALSO: Aisha Buhari seeks thorough probe of sex-for-marks cases
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report, malnutrition is a direct or underlying cause of 45 per cent of all deaths of under-five children. Nigeria has the second highest burden of stunted children in the world, with a national prevalence rate of 32 percent of children under five. An estimated 2 million children in Nigeria suffer from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), but only two out of every 10 children affected is currently reached with treatment. Seven percent of women of childbearing age also suffer from acute malnutrition.
According to the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, “malnutrition is not always the question of poverty but usually about ignorance. I hope that while we focus on domestic production of RUTF, we will reach the point where children are well-nourished and mothers are adequately informed on what kinds of food they need to feed their children.
“We cannot continue to rely on importation of foods, medicines indefinitely etc., because the cost is usually too high. So the question of local domestic manufacture cuts across a wide range of products, not only food but also industrial and consumer products. We need to join the league of industrial countries such that we are able to produce consistently some of the things that we consume.
“The Federal Ministry of Health welcomes and wholly supports this initiative and wish that we extend it to other products so that Nigeria can be proud and we can be able to satisfy our needs and employ labour.
“A big handicap here is electricity because industries cannot work well if they don’t have electricity; the cost of diesel is such that you cannot run a factory comfortably and very profitably without it. I hope that he huge emphasis that the government is placing on electricity will begin to solve that problem.”
Leave a Reply