By Hassan Zaggi
The baby is 11 months old, but looks physically small like a 3-month-old. The baby looks pale, inactive and weak. Unknown to the mother, the baby was severely malnourished.
Even though she has started receiving the Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF), she was yet to start showing signs of recovery.
Sighted at a suburb in Bwari Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), at an empowerment training organised by the International Society of Media in Public Health (ISMPH), the mother of the 11-month-old, Mrs. Dorcas Bataf, disclosed that initially, they did not know that the ill-health experience by the baby was due to severe malnutrition.
She disclosed that the baby does not eat and when she attempts to, she throws it out.
“The baby started stooling and vomiting. We came to the hospital and we were admitted. The doctor said that the baby is not feeding well.
“The doctor gave us multivitamins but there was no improvement.
“I wish I have something to do. If I have the resources, I can introduce my baby to any kind of food she wants to eat. But since I have no money, I don’t have any alternative than to sit and look at her.
“If I will be trained in this meeting and have something doing to generate money, I will be very happy,” the woman said.
She noted that the baby has been introduced to RUFT but the recovery rate is slow because she was acutely malnourished.
Responding to questions on the rationale behind the training, which is sponsored by the EU Act project on Severe Acute Malnutrition, the Programme Officer, Bukola Smith, said that: “We intend to train mothers of malnourished children. The idea is to look at a sustainable solution to the issue of Acute Severe Malnutrition.
“This project intends to look for mothers of severely acute malnourished children and empower them, give them skills and the means to create income and we are looking to see how that transforms into providing feeding for the children.
“We think this is a more sustainable solution and that is what this project intends to do.”
She explained that: “At this point, we are attending to the issue of income. During the focus group discussion where we asked all the beneficiaries what the challenges are, most responses we received boiled down to poverty. There is immense poverty in this environment. Even though a lot of these women are farmers, they do not know the proper combination of meals to feed a child at a particular age.
“What we are providing is not just additional income, but we are providing nutritional knowledge to the mothers so that they will know that you cannot just feed a child with the same meal in the morning to evening.”
It would be recalled that, during a recent visit to the Etsu Kwali, the Executive Director of ISMPH, Chief Moji Makanjuola, disclosed that her NGO has concluded plans to train 30 women each in Kwali and Bwari Area Councils of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on how to turn waste to wealth.
The beneficiaries of the training, she said, were going to be poor women who do not have strong means of livelihood in order to empower them so that they can be able to support their families.
The training, according to her, was targeted at fighting child malnutrition which is mostly triggered by poverty and ignorance.
Chief Moji argued that if women have strong means of livelihoods, they can support their families, especially, provide nutritious food to their children.
“We were given the mandate to train only 30 women on how to make waste to wealth. What they can do as poor women so that they can also be able to augment the feeding at home.
“I then decided that I cannot do that with justification until I come to the palace because it is here that they can bring us poor women.
“We want to work with poor women. We don’t want to work with people who can feed themselves. We were given the mandate to train 30 women in Kwali and also 30 in Bwari Area Council,” she said.
The ISMPH Executive Director noted that: “Everywhere we go, we see waste around. These waste can be turned into wealth. Take for example, the nylon paper that is thrown around, next time I come I will show you what people are doing with nylon paper and it can be used.
“Instead of using firewood, we can now compress it to become our firewood. Women are selling it. We have tried it, it is working in Bauchi, people are doing it in Kaduna, Katsina, Kano and Jigawa. It is not something that is so new, but it is new when you don’t know about it.
“We want to also teach them what they can give to their children to avoid malnutrition, we also want to emphasis to them that when you breastfeed exclusively, that does not need water.”
Lamenting on the level of child malnutrition in the country, Chief Moji said: “When we look at malnutrition, it so much bothers on education, it borders on the know-how, it also borders on our mothers to know what to give their children. Some of them know but they cant afford it. Some of them don’t even know.
“You have a child that is 6 months and you are breastfeeding, instead of starting with pap, you start with hard food. That child’s stomach is not strong enough. This is what we have been doing for the past three and half years.”
