Addressing Nigeria’s malnutrition challenge

Children are a precious gift to every family and nation. Thus, the way and manner they are weaned and nurtured should reflect their precious nature.

Over the decades, health experts have expressed a common understanding that exclusive breastfeeding of babies for the first six months is recommended and necessary for the healthy and normal growth of children. However, in the case of Nigeria as revealed in the last National Demographic and Health survey conducted in 2008, only 13.1 percent of Nigerian children are exclusively breastfed within the first six months of life, while up to 76.1 percent of children in the country are exposed to complementary feeding before the age of six months.

The survey also showed that 41 percent of Nigerian children under five are stunted (too short for their age), 14 percent of children are wasted (too thin for their age), while nearly one child in every four is underweight as a result of acute malnutrition in most parts of Nigeria.

To make matters worse, Save the Children’s report, ‘A life free from hunger: Tackling child malnutrition’, show that 11 million Nigerian children are chronically malnourished and this could increase to 13.4 million by 2020 if nothing is done to address the situation.

Malnutrition, which is the insufficiency and imbalance in the intake of nutrients, is believed to be the underlying cause of 53 percent of the one million deaths of children under five in Nigeria, according to health experts.

While malnutrition manifests as marasmus and kwashiorkor (in children) and affects cognitive ability of children to learn in school, research has shown that inability to provide adequate nutrients for proper development reduces the intelligent quotient (IQ) of a newborn by 13.5 points with the effect being irreversible.

Under-nutrition, a form of malnutrition that is more prevalent in the country, occurs as a result of having a poor diet, too few calories or too little nutritious food or both (for a number of years) or an infection leading to mal-absorption of nutrients and micronutrient deficiencies – a long-term lack of vitamins and minerals in child’s diet.

Though it is common knowledge that poverty is to a considerable degree the reason for the general food insecurity suffered by many households, poor knowledge of proper nutritional practices has contributed tremendously towards escalating the prevalence of malnutrition in Nigeria, with women and children being the most vulnerable groups.

The first 1,000 days of a child’s life is a critical period for rapid and adequate brain development. While 70 percent of brain development occurs when the child is at foetus stage, up to 20 percent of brain development takes place from the first year of life up until the child’s second birthday.

Development experience clearly reveals that malnutrition is severely undermining economic growth. Studies have proven that an estimated 2 to 3 percent of the national income of Nigeria is lost on account of malnutrition. Dire as the situation is, experts do strongly hold the view that exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of the life of the child can help prevent malnutrition, significantly improve the chances of child survival and, more importantly, aid proper child development.

Taking a cue from China that met its Millennium Development Goal on reducing malnutrition in children in 2012, though stunting is still high in rural areas in China, it achieved its target by ensuring that mothers space their children well and children receive professional health care and vaccination.

In the case of Nigeria, cost-effective interventions such as Essential Nutrition Actions should be deployed with focus on the period from pregnancy and through the first two years of a child’s life. Nutrition experts believe that a proper implementation of these interventions would reduce child mortality by 60 percent.

There is the need for states to develop and implement food and nutrition policies that will address issues of sustainable food production, processing, distribution and consumption. The plan of action should also cater for issues of optimal food quality, quantity and integration of multi-sectoral efforts for sustaining food and nutrition security.

The need for a robust dietary plan and process that includes exclusive breastfeeding for six months, which has proven to have an impact on the nutrition of children, consumption of vital food nutrients, such as Vitamin A, iodised salt and zinc supplementation should be championed by all tiers of government. Governments at all levels and across every clime, and peoples, should confront malnutrition with resolute decisiveness as this threatens the proper development and security of humans.