Oyo State has commenced training 882 health workers on maternal, infant and young child nutrition to enhance the skills of healthcare workers.
The state government said it would help provide information and services to mothers to ensure children’s appropriate growth and development through optimal feeding practices.
The nutrition programme, organised by the Nutrition Department of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in collaboration with the Oyo State Ministry of Health, aims to enhance the capacity of health workers to provide optimal Maternal, Infant, and Young Child Nutrition.
Speaking on behalf of the director of nutrition, Federal Ministry of Health, Mrs Lamidi Bakare, nutrition officer Jibola Babatunde said that the training was one way the Department of Nutrition was contributing to the capacity building of one hundred and twenty thousand healthcare and frontline workers to enhance their capacity.
He noted that the maternal, infant, and young child nutrition training was all-encompassing and upgraded the old young child feeding initiated in 2012.
Lamidi posited that the maternal infant and young child nutrition manual provided by the Federal Ministry of Health is loaded to enhance the capacity of the healthcare and frontline workers to provide adequate information for nursing mothers.
In her address, Oyo State Commissioner for Health, Dr Oluwaserimi Ajetunmobi, explained that the training programme’s essence was to enhance the capacity of key decision-makers, program officers, and frontline workers to provide optimal maternal, infant, and young child nutrition information to nursing mothers.
She said the training program was expected to yield significant results in reducing malnutrition among women and children in the state.
Ajetunmobi noted that despite the ongoing efforts by the government and relevant stakeholders to reduce childhood malnutrition, the persistent burden of malnutrition among women and children threatens the country’s health and future development.
She charged the healthcare workers with providing accurate information to households, mothers, and other caregivers on optimal maternal, infant, and young child nutrition to ensure that families are supported and well informed to provide optimal maternal, infant, and young child nutrition practices.
“Health workers are expected to provide accurate information to households, mothers and other caregivers on optimal maternal, infant and young child nutrition, ensuring that families are supported and well informed to offer optimal maternal and young child nutrition practices.
“To perform this role effectively, the capacity of health workers must be adequately built.
“The newly updated MIYCN training package is a veritable tool to strengthen the capacity of health workers to deliver quality MIYCN services. A vital next step is to conduct training at the State level.
“This is important to ensure that the frontline health workers (constantly interfacing with mothers and caregivers) receive this essential training.
“If health workers are adequately trained, they will provide the counselling and support needed to enable mothers and caregivers to practice optimal nutrition.
“This will significantly reduce malnutrition in all forms, thus improving our national nutrition indices.
“This training will be held for seven (7) days and will involve a variety of training methods, including the use of counselling materials, visual aids, group discussions, case studies, role-play and field trips to health facilities for clinical exercises.
“I want to join us in doing our best to ensure that the purpose of this meeting is successfully achieved. I wish you all a fruitful deliberation in this meeting, she said.
In her remarks, Dr Kadijat Alarape, the director of nutrition at the Oyo State Healthcare Board and project coordinator for accelerating nutrition results in Nigeria, said that the program aims to reduce malnutrition. She stressed that the board is building the capacity of relevant stakeholders providing services at the primary healthcare level in order to pass the right message to nursing mothers.
