By Henry Obetta

A non-government organisation, Health Emergency Initiative, HEI, has raised concern over the alarming rate of Malnutrition among Nigerian children saying that if the challenge is not rapidly curtailed, it may pose serious risks to the country’s future.

According to HEI, malnutrition affects about 35% of children in Nigeria specifically between the ages of 0 to 5 years with 4 out of every 10 children found to be malnourished.

The organisation revealed this on Tuesday, during the flag off of its Gift Health Nutrition program in collaboration with Cardgoal at the Massey Street children hospital, Lagos. The event featured talks on proper dieting for children, and presentaion of health nutrition packages for children.

Speaking at the event, Executive Director of HEI, Mr. Paschal Achunine, said that the program aimed to alleviate malnutrition among children inorder to give them the opportunity to live and thrive.

The ED said that over the years of its health intervention, HEI discovered that the root cause of illness among children was malnutrition and which needed urgent intervention.

He said “Malnutrition leads to stunted growth, its responsible for low IQ or poor cognitive development. It also affects other areas like the organ development as reproductive organs are affected and even more scary is that a malnourished child grows up and gives birth to offsprings that are having those traits.

“So this is an urgent call to the need of fixing this challenge because we are going to loose a lot of our children, even those who survive would be operating with suboptimal human components and coscient”
Achunine while stating that the program had a track record of over 50% recovery in other locations said that there was going to be evaluation after 30 days to check for improvement in children
“We are coimg back after 30 days. So we are expecting that in the next 30 days, we will come back to refill the stock for the children and with the learning thier mothers grabbed today, we are expecting rapid recovery.”

He urged that government pay more attention to Primary Health Care centers by providing resources as it was the first place parents visited when thier children fell ill. He also urged that there be empowerment for mothers inorder enable them afford basic food supplies to be able to prepare nutritious meals for thier children

Also speaking, Medical Director, Massey Street children hospital, Olanike Olutekunbi emphasised that malnutrition is an underlined factor in all the diseases that affect children.

She said “For the growing child, the first 1 to 3 years is very important as regards the brain growth. If we can take care of malnutrition during this period, we are assured that the brain growth is perfect and the child can grow up to have impact”

She expressed gratitude to the organisers stating that they were delighted for the initiative and open for more collaborations.

In her own remarks, Mrs. Sean Miriam, a benefactor of the program, thanked the organisers for the support and information provided.

“I came for my child because she is underweight and the program was awesome. They taught us how to raise our kids based on nutrition and diets they need in a day to improve thier weight. I learnt a lot today.”

Representing Cardgoal, Miriam Onyini said that the initiative emphasised Cardgoal’s social cooperate responsibility noting that after they conducted research they discovered that malnutrition was a challenge that needed urgent intervention.

She said “We realised that malnutrition is a major problem in Nigeria especially in Lagos and South West regions. We thought of how to bridge the gap and we started looking for Implementing partners and people that have connections to the grassroots, then we connected with HEI”

Miriam noted that the program would be continued in more local government areas in Lagos inorder to reach and help more children.