The Executive Director of the ISMPH, Mrs Moji Makanjuola, at the dissemination of the European Union Agents for Citizen-driven Transformation (EU-ACT), explained that with the right nutritional knowledge, mothers can feed their children with the right food combination.
Makanjuola pointed out that poverty, being a major factor fueling malnutrition, can be tackled by empowering women, especially in rural areas, to be able to earn money, which will in turn afford them the ability to purchase healthy meals for their children.
“Nigeria has very highly serious malnutrition issues such as underfeeding, overfeeding and wrong feeding, they all have health issues.
“Of these, underfeeding is our focus in terms of quality and quantity. This is shown because we have well over two million children not just malnourished but also Severely Acutely malnourished.”
“It is a very sad situation and unacceptable for a nation that is not at war. Some of the images of these SAM children are so disturbing that you mistake them for images from a drought zone or war zone”.
“This status leaves them at the least, wasted, stunted and with weak cognitive and affective domains and are thus unable to compete with their peers – in a 21st Century world driven by Science and Technology that are primarily brain driven”.
“All of their plights is totally avoidable and wholly preventable when we take action duly by feeding them right”.
“Some of their plights can be corrected when we treat them, to a large extent. Whatever we do we need to care for them. They are our reason for being here today even if they have come through the mothers, to get nutritional justice”. She added.