Abuja – Prof. Ngozi Nnam, the Chairman, Scaling-Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUN), an NGO, has urged governments at all levels to be committed toward addressing the nation’s malnutrition burden.
Nnam gave the advice at a-two day workshop organised by CS-SUN on Tuesday in Abuja.
Nnam, who is also the President, Nutrition Society of Nigeria, said such commitment could be in funding and enlightening the populace on the need for mothers to practice exclusive breastfeeding.
She described exclusive breastfeeding as having great impact on the nation’s health indices but said the nation was backward in its nutritional status.
The chairman, however, commended Federal Government for its commitment with regards to scaling up the societal nutritional standard among others at
the 2013 London summit.
She explained that Nigeria needed to do more in nutrition, exclusive breastfeeding, malaria and anaemia, saying “we are only on track in the aspect of obesity, which is a negative reflection of the nation as far as development is concerned.”
Nnam said that the workshop, with the theme “Prioritising investment in nutrition for sustainable development in Nigeria-The road to Rio 2016’’, assessed government commitments to the 2013 summit in London.
She emphasised that “to accomplish this, we need commitment from government in the area of funding.
“One of the commitments of government is to have budget line for nutrition, how far and how has it been done.
“More so, we need to know what we have been able to accomplish and what will happen when government gets to RIO in August.”
She said that funding for nutrition programme had been included in the budget “but there is no cash backing yet.”
The chairman stressed the need for strong financial backing and meeting up with whatever commitment government had made regarding the programme.
Dr David Olayemi, the Head of Advocacy and Campaign, Save the Children, an NGO, identified exclusive breastfeeding as one of the areas to scale up the nation’s nutrition value.
He described the level of compliance to exclusive breastfeeding in the country as low and urged government to play leadership role at ensuring that communities did the right thing with regards to compliance to exclusive breastfeeding by mothers.
He said such role should include enhanced education for mothers to breastfeed exclusively for at least six months.
Olayemi lauded the UN and other international development partners for assisting Nigeria to ease its nutrition burden, among others.
He expressed concern that while exclusive breastfeeding did not require money, some mothers refused to abide by the practice (NAN)