The United Nations Children’s Fund has lamented that 152, 243 children under five years in Enugu State are stunted in growth.
The Planning and Monitoring Specialist, UNICEF, Enugu Field Office, Mrs Maureen Zubie-Okolo disclosed this on Thursday, in Enugu during a Policy Dialogue with Enugu State Executive and Legislative Councils on Investment in Nutrition.
Zubie-Okolo said the poor state of nutrition arose from poor maternal, infant and young child feeding practices during the first 1000 days of the child’s life.
“In Enugu State, only 7.8 per cent of children under five years receive the minimum acceptable diet while less than one-fifth children 0-5 months are exclusively breastfed.
“This is a call for both the executive and legislative arms of the state government to come together to ensure that nutrition is placed on the agenda,” she said.
She said that malnutrition had become a silent emergency, and lamented that despite the unfortunate development it was receiving little or no attention.
While she said that the meeting was in line with the Sustainable Development Goals agenda of ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030, added the goal also included achieving the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under five years by 2025.
Zubie-Okolo said that UNICEF was committed to working with its partners, including the state government to achieve the agenda.
She said that nutrition had received perennially low attention in Nigeria and Enugu and had, therefore, contributed to the high global malnutrition rates.
Zubie-Okolo said that investment in scaling-up nutrition would yield immediate returns, save lives, and enable children and their mothers to have a better future.
Also, a Nutrition Specialist, Mrs Chizoba Steve-Edemba, said that the nutrition indices in the state was quite low and needed to be addressed.
Steve-Edemba appealed to the state government to extend the maternity leave of nursing mothers to six months.
“This will help the state to improve nutrition outcomes for all and improve human capital development,” Steve-Edemba said.
Responding, the Enugu State Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Mr David Ugwunta, said that the state government would aggregate all issues raised at the meeting and attend to them.
Ugwunta committed that the budget provisions for nutrition management in the state would be improved.
