Kaduna Govt, UNICEF Strengthen Nutrition Data Management

Kaduna State government with support from United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has taken steps to strengthen nutrition data management to improve decision-making and quality of service delivery across the state.

The state nutrition officer, Mrs Ramatu Haruna, stated this on Tuesday in Zaria at a two-day training on nutrition data management, organized by the state primary health care board.

Haruna said over the years, there have been challenges on data management at different levels, adding that the training was to increase the capacity and enhance skills in nutrition data management.

“Currently, the State, in partnership with UNICEF, is implementing Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) in 107 Out-Patient Therapeutic Centres in 21 local government areas. Also, the community infant and young child feeding programme is being implemented in the whole 23 LGAs of the state.

“Data from these activities are collected periodically and shared with all stakeholders at all levels for decision making”.

The state integrated data control coordinator, Mr Jibril Isah, said that the objective of the training was to strengthen competencies of HMIS and nutrition officers on the national HMIS data collection tools.

Also, Dr Neyu Iliyasu, director, family and community Health Services, KSPHCB, highlighted the key role of quality data in decision making for nutrition and other health services.

Iliyasu pointed out that improving the capacity of data managers would significantly improve the quality of nutrition data across the council areas to enable the local councils and state government make informed decisions.

A nutrition specialist, UNICEF Kaduna State, Mrs Chinwe Ezeife, said the training was crucial to ensuring effective data management for result-oriented decision making that would improve nutrition indices in the state.