US provides $9.5m assistance to ensure good health of pregnant women
The United States, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has provided an additional $9.5 million to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to ensure more than 175,000 mothers and children under five do not suffer from malnutrition during this year’s rainy season in Nigeria, in commemoration of the World Milk Day 2017.
The grant from USAID’s Health, Population, and Nutrition Office, is to improve ongoing support for the humanitarian assistance in Nigeria by its Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Food for Peace (FFP), and seeks to bridge a funding shortfall announced by WFP late last month.
The grant will fund a blanket supplementary feeding program to protect the nutrition status of children aged six months to five years and lactating women in Internally Displace People (IDP) camps and host communities of Borno State through provision of specialised nutritious foods.
Stephen Haykin, USAID/Nigeria Mission director, said the support will reach nine areas where the needs of mothers and their children are worse hit.
“In response to the call by WFP to meet a severe funding shortfall, USAID is pleased to play a part in making sure that the most vulnerable of those impacted by the Boko Haram conflict are taken care of,” he said.
The assistance will help WFP reach an additional 110,000 children under five and 65,000 pregnant and nursing mothers with specialised nutritious food commodities in 9 Local Government Areas (LGA) in Borno State.
WFP launched a Blanket Supplementary Feeding Program aims to prevent the further decline in nutritional status among young children suffering from moderate acute malnutrition, as well as protect the nutritional status of others who are not yet malnourished but are at high risk.
Seyi John Salau