The United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) has decried the Federal and states government’s low budget to tackle malnutrition in the country
It also disclosed that Lagos, Kano, Katsina and Borno top the list of food insecurity in Nigeria as it emphasized more funding is required to help carry out sensitization and advocacy campaigns in remote areas, as well as provide succour for children facing severe malnutrition in the country.
The UNICEF Nutrition Officer, Nkeiru Enwelum, in her presentation on ‘Nutrition situation in Nigeria: An Overview of Malnutrition in Nigeria and its impact on children’ at a two-day workshop on ‘Media Dialogue on Nutrition Financing in Nigeria’, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, disclosed that currently, about 35 million children in Nigeria are malnourished.
She said: “About 35 million of under-five children in Nigeria and out this we have 12 million of them mal-nourished.
“We have about 3 million that wasted in Nigeria and about 23.5 million children are anemic, that is suffering (about 60 per cent of children in Nigeria) – from National Population Commission and demographic surveys.”
Enwelum further disclosed that Nigeria ranks number one in Africa on data on malnourished children and number two in the world.
Enwelum also said that about one million people suffer from acute food insecurity adding that about 17.7 million people are hungry in Nigeria.
“The states with the highest number of people suffering from food insecurity in Nigeria are Kano and Lagos.
“Despite Kano, Borno, Katsina and Lagos ranking high in the food insecurity ladder, malnutrition is widespread in the country, affecting people living in other parts of the country.”
Enwelum also listed the forms of malnutrition as acute malnutrition, severe wasting, stunting, and obesity.
“Some of the diseases or resultant body malfunction arising from malnutrition are known as micronutrient deficiency, anemia, rickets and vitamin A deficiency (xerophthalmia).”
Enwelum also gave an assessment of the progress made on interventions in the health sector, saying that exclusive breastfeeding is perhaps the only aspect of the SDGs that Nigeria is making progress on and may likely meet the target by 2030.
Earlier, the UNICEF Communication Specialist, Mr. Geoffrey Njoku, reiterated that the dialogue was intended to identify funding gaps in national budgets for addressing issues of child malnutrition and how to close the gaps across the country.
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