Malnutrition: Gombe benefits from $10m funding

GOMBE State has been listed among twelve other States in the country to benefit from the intervention aimed at addressing preventive and treatment aspect of malnutrition for four for states worst hit by acute malnutrition.

With an allocation of 10 million USD, the project will be run through the State Ministry of Health under the Accelerated Nutrition Results Project (ANRIN).

This was made known on Monday during a stakeholders roundtable dialogue on budgeting for nutrition organised by Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), in partnership with United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) held in Gombe.

The meeting which drew participants from the Gombe State House of Assembly, Gombe State Ministries of Finance and Economic Planning, Primary Health Care Development Agency, Civil Society groups as well as the media, was aimed at bringing under one roof the state’s executive, legislative, CSOs and the media to identify opportunities for financing nutrition, understand existing efforts by the State towards increasing domestic investment for nutrition and address nutrition emergency, giving cognisance to the importance of timely release of funds.

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A communiqué signed and issued by representatives of all segments of the stakeholders, comprising Laraba Ahmed Kawu from the Ministry of Health, Musa Bello from the State House of Assembly, Stephen Ayuba from the Ministry of Economic Planning, Placidus Peters from Care for Life, Sani Adamu Jauro from Ahmed Kawu Heart Initiative for Children as well as Auwal Ahmed and Fatima Sadique from the media, noted that Gombe state is among one of the states that receive less allocation from the federal government.

It said this has made it difficult for the state to release counterpart funds to match donor intervention and which makes the state very dependent on interventions from development partners to implement some projects.

The communiqué said, In order to ensure accountability and efficiency in nutrition funding in the state, there is need for the state to create a state nutrition agency or department to plan and manage budgetary allocations and intervention for nutrition.

It called on the State House of Assembly to liaise with the civil society group to galvanise the creation of governance and accountability structure on nutrition as well as facilitate increase in budgetary allocation and strengthen oversight activities on release of nutrition funding.

It also called on civil society groups to intensify efforts on policy and legislative advocacy on increased budgetary allocation (at least 15 per cent)the to health sector and the Media to adopt holistic approach to unveil challenges bedevilling adequate and timely release of funding for nutrition.