By Rauf Oyewole
The Bauchi State Government through the Primary Health Care Development Board and CASCADE (Care Nigeria) have created ‘nutrition corner’ at primary health centres in the state to teach pregnant and nursing mothers how to combine recipes to make nutritious meals.
The State, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has 54,000 children battling with malnutrition, saying further that two in ten children in Bauchi are malnourished.
To reduce the rate, the Board and the Non-governmental organisation, Care Nigeria, through its project ‘Facility Based Nutrition Corner’ supported by Development Exchange Centre (DEC), nutritional ingredients and procedure guidelines were donated to 50 PHCs in 10 local government areas.
The Project Manager of Cascade, Ishaya Daniel while speaking at Miri PHC on Wednesday, explained that the organisation discovered that most of the rural women lack the information and enlightenment to explore available grains and vegetables around them for a balanced diet.
“We have decided to create this corner to target nursing and pregnant women during their antenatal care (ANC) to teach them some food combinations for nutrition for us to prevent rising cases of malnourished children. Health care workers have been trained to train the women.”
Also speaking, the Executive Chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Board, Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed, commended the organisation for its partnership to lower the curve of malnutrition, saying it is critical to encourage them to do more while others are withdrawing their support.
“Over the last five years when I came onboard as the Chairman of the Board, I have always been thinking of how we can create the nutrition corners in all our 323 PHC per ward, but it has been difficult to do it. I'm very happy that our partner, Cascade, is doing this.”
Mohammed charged lactating mothers to embrace exclusive breastfeeding and simple nutritious food combinations to reduce the rate of stunting and wasting in children.
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