By Chioma Obinna

To avert the death of over 2.5 million Nigerian children annually from malnutrition, stakeholders in childcare have called for the immediate release of funds for nutrition in the 2016 budget to improve the nutrition status of millions of children, particularly in the north.

At a two-day Summit in Kano State for State Policy Makers on Financing Nutrition in Northern Nigeria, they also demanded that adequate funds should be provided in the 2017 States’ budgets to scale up nutrition interventions.

Expressing  displeasure over the continued deaths of Nigerian children from severe acute malnutrition, they stressed the need for policy makers to give consideration to adequate fund provision to maximize and leverage donor resources for treatment of severe acute malnourished children, scale up of infant and young child feeding practices as well as micronutrients deficiency.

In a communiqué signed by representatives of various organisations at the Summit put together by UNICEF, Federal Ministry of Budget and National Planning in partnership with Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, CISLAC, with support from UKAID and Children’s Investment Fund Foundation of UK, they called for prioritisation of malnutrition as a major health crisis in Northern Nigeria.

“Government should consider nutrition as a multi-sectoral issue; develop and adopt multi-sectoral policies and implementable cost plans to address the high rates of malnutrition in Northern Nigeria,” they added.

They called for prompt domestication and effective implementation of the National Policy for Food and Nutrition with functional support system and cost Nutrition Plan of Action by the States to provide guidelines and enhance planning for policy formulation towards maternal and child nutrition intervention and financing.

They stressed the need to encourage appropriate and exclusive breastfeeding  through individual re-orientation, community participation and ownership, to address childhood malnutrition and combat childhood killer diseases at all levels.

“Nigeria should also embrace local capacity in addressing malnutrition through diversification into agricultural sector to boost local remedies, enhanced financial support for Small-Scale farming and Small Scale Enterprises; and appropriate community mobilization, sensitization and awareness.

“There is also the need to mainstream well-funded nutrition components in the State Primary Health Care systems to ensure that minimum package of nutrition is institutionalised through policy transformation and service delivery as well as build synergy between the state legislative and executive arms on nutrition interventions,” they noted.