Food is very essential to human life. This explains why foods consumed
by both adults and children must be nutritionally rich in content.
Any nutritional imbalance poses serious health problem, particularly
to children – between suckling age up to ten years.
It goes without saying that children need high calorie and balanced
diet food for bodily growth and mental formations.
A balanced diet is one that gives the body the nutrition it needs to
function properly. An inadequacy or imbalance in diet causes
malnutrition.
In medical and health parlance, malnutrition is generally a very broad
term which refers to both under-nutrition (sub-nutrition) and
over-nutrition.
An individual is said to be malnourished or suffering from under
nutrition if his or her dietary intake does not provide the adequate
calories and protein for body maintenance and growth.
People can also be malnourished or suffer from over-nutrition if they
consume too many calories.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), malnutrition is the
gravest single threat to global public health.
And it is the children who are by far affected by malnutrition because
they need nourishing foods in their formative stages more than any
group.
In essence, the quality of staple foods available to children in this
early stage of their lives goes a long way in determining their
development, brain functions and health in their later years.
Sadly, there are approximately 1.7 million severely and acutely
malnourished children under 5 years of age in Nigeria, accounting for
a tenth of the global total of children suffering from malnutrition.
And close to a thousand Nigerian children, according to WHO reports,
die of malnutrition-related causes every day, totalling about 361,000
each year.
Predominantly, a larger percentage of these malnourished children are
located in the northern part of the country.
A Punch Newspaper editorial of 28 July 2013, entitled: “High
malnutrition in Nigerian children,” highlighted this ugly scenario by
quoting a 2013 report by the Federal Ministry of Health, which states
thus: “41 per cent of Nigerian children under age five suffer stunted
growth as a result of malnutrition.”
The survey, conducted in all the states of the federation by the
ministry, according to the editorial, showed that acute malnutrition
is prevalent among children in all the states in the North, with a
population put at as high as 80 per cent of the region’s children
population.
Last month, the Nigerian Tribune reported that 2,072 children died of
malnutrition in Zamfara State alone in what could easily capture as
one of the worst humanitarian cases of the time.
The trend has been so alarming that the Federal Government in
conjunction with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) had to
quickly intervene in 2014 before it snowballed into a national crisis.
That prompt intervention, according to reports, reached more than a
million children with a successful and cost-effective treatment for
acutely malnourished children.
After the exercise, UNICEF, disclosed that over a million children
were reached with life-saving malnutrition treatment in the
Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) introduced
into 11 Northern Nigerian states where malnutrition poses a great
threat.
It is instructive to know that acute malnutrition leads to stunted
growth of children, which in turn causes disproportional physical body
formations as well as reduce intellectual capacityies.
Many more had been saved through such interventions in the past, not
only in Nigeria but across the African continent, mostly in
war-ravaged countries like Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi and Central
African Republic.
This is as absurd as it is unacceptable in Nigeria of 21st century
where malaria, polio and other minor ailments still pose serious
health threats to children.
Indeed, this trend must be reversed as a matter of urgency or else
millions of the nation’s tomorrow leaders may grow up to be infirm in
body and deficient in intelligent quotientt.
Sincerely, I cannot agree more with some of the suggestions offered in
the PUNCH editorial referred to above.
One is an appeal to the 36 states of the federation to introduce free
feeding system in the primary schools and feed the pupils with rich
nutritional foods.
In this wise, what the rest 35 states need to do is to understudy and
adopt the school feeding scheme, which Osun State started in 2012 and
Christened O’ Meal.
The Osun example is part of a programme of producing healthy,
energetic and intelligent pupils by giving them balanced diet their
bodies need to grow.
In a week, more than 252, 000 pupils take nourishing foods and fruits
that are rich in protein, vitamins, minerals and other food nutrients.
Of particular interest is the introduction of red cocoyam, which
nutritionists have confirmed contains high content of protein.
The ggovernment of Osun was able to go this far because it involved
nutritionists and medical experts in the formulation of the food pack
before the free feeding scheme finally took off.
The introduction of cocoyam therefore added to the sources of protein
that enrich the food pack of the pupils.
The Osun example has ignited a revolutionary job creation opportunity,
enhanced education through increased enrolments and other benefits.
Certainly, feeding over 250000 children daily with locally sourced
food materials cannot but be impactful on agriculture, supply chains
and other sectors with direct or remote relationships.
Ironically, while some people have acknowledged this laudable school
free feeding scheme and are calling on other states to take a cue from
Osun, it was recently the subject of a negative campaign especially in
the face of the challenges posed by revenue shortages which brought
about a national wage crisis.
Indeed, in a seemingly erroneous assessment of the scheme, a few
people had their ways to the pages of some of the newspapers with the
calls for an end to this scheme. The expected ‘gain’ of that according
to those behind the calls, was that money saved from stoppage of the
scheme would therefore be diverted to paying salaries. What a grievous
error of judgment.
At this critical time when there should be an intervention by the
Federal Government to arrest the wave of malnutrition spreading like
harmattan wide fire in the country, the Osun example offers very great
opportunity as a template for a nationwide application.
Perhaps, one of the ways Nigeria could show her seriousness lies in
showing commitment to a nationwide implementation of the school
feeding programme by making it a national policy.
When it was reported two years ago that the Governor of Osun, Ogbeni
Rauf Aregbesola was invited to the British Parliament to deliver a
talk on how Osun was executing its free meal programme, it was obvious
that something worthy of being studied had been noticed beyond the
confines of the Nigerian state.
Nigeria does not need to travel far in its search for a quick way out.
A critical study of the Osun template in school feedings offers ways
to solving the problem and therefore, helping the malnourished child.
We should emulate other nations of the world, which have solved the
problem of malnutrition and reshaped the life of their children for
the sake of tomorrow.
This unending spiral of life-sapping scourge must be stopped. And
urgently too!
*AbdulFatah Adekunle Owolabi, a journalist and Law student, writes
from Osogbo through kunleowolabi17@yahoo.com
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