Governors must own the fight against acute malnutrition ― CISLAC

Newly inaugurated State Governors in the country have been tasked to own the fight against acute malnutrition currently ravaging children in the country.

The call was made by the  Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, who said that the call becomes necessary considering the fact that many International donor organisations have started withdrawing from funding many programmes in the country.

He added that before now, many State Governments do little or nothing in the fight against acute malnutrition.

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Musa Rafsanjani spoke through Ms Lovelyn Agbor-Gabriel, CISLAC’s SAM Project Coordinator/Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at the opening of a one-day Wider CSO Groups Engagement on the Prevention and Treatment of Severe Acute Malnutrition as a Child Right Issue in Gombe State held on Thursday.

Musa Rafsanjani who stressed that malnutrition is still a very big issue in Nigeria considering that about 65 children die as a result of acute malnutrition every hour, said treatment and prevention of malnutrition in children must be treated as a fundamental human right of the children.

“Many State Governments don’t have matching funds, and donor organisations have started leaving, so, we have to make State Governments own these programmes aimed at fighting malnutrition”, he stressed.

To the Civil Society Organisations, he said, “We, therefore, need to engage our Governments to be accountable and know that treatment and prevention of malnutrition should be made a fundamental human right of children”.

The Programme officer of CISLAC, Mohammed Murtala, said State Governments should be able to procure at least seventy (70) per cent of the Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) used in reviving acutely malnourished children which are now produced in Nigeria.

Gombe State had produced a well-documented state policy on malnutrition since 2016, but unfortunately, it has not been implemented since then.