Nutrition experts have appealed to the federal government to implement the Child Right Act signed into law in 2003 and ensure improvement in the nutrition value of foods given to children, saying its implementation would add to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country.
This was part of the views expressed at a workshop organised by the National Council on Nutrition (NCN) on the topic, “Communicating to inspire change dialogue on Nutrition”.
Speaking at the event yesterday in Lagos, the chief nutritionist for United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Nigeria, Mrs. Nemat Hajeebnoy, said about 100 children die per hour in Nigeria on a daily basis due to malnutrition.
To this end, she urged the federal government to do everything within its power to change the narrative, because the high rate of mortality due to malnutrition is not good for Nigeria’s image.
She said since Nigeria signed the Child Right Act, there was nothing on ground to show that the government cared about the rights of the children.
Hajeebnoy said from research carried out, only one-third of children given birth to in Nigeria has access to good feeding, just as she advised nursing mother, to exclusively breast feed their children for at least six months after birth because the development of their brain and nutrition level had not been completed in the womb before their birth.
Earlier, the special assistant to the president on nutrition, Mrs. Abimbola Adesanmi, said NCNon is saddled with the responsibility of tackling the issue of malnutrition by developing and monitoring programmes that promote nutritional value.
She said the workshop was to engage the media and make them understand how messy the issue of malnutrition had become in Nigeria, stressing that the issue of nutrition should be addressed now and in the future.
In his remark, Alhaji Jamil Abdallah, who represented the permanent secretary, Federal Ministry of Finance, said the workshop was an opportunity to sensitise media practitioners to promote nutrition values to the national development, noting that nutrition would be a panacea to the development of the country.
“The importance of nutrition can’t be critically raised any other time than now. The ministry of finance will coordinate nutritional activities in the country,” he said.
