Why Nigeria Should Prioritise Investments In Child Nutrition, Protection To Curb Malnutrition

Pregnant women are advised to pri­oritise the growth of their unborn child by consuming foods high in vital minerals like calcium and iron. A child’s body and brain require all the essential nutrients for proper nutri­tion and healthy growth. Therefore, when pregnant mothers don’t eat at all or eat very little, they have fewer nutrients to pass on to their unborn children.

This leads to Anaemia in mothers and malnu­trition, stunting, wasting, under weight in children. Anaemia affects 7.8 million pregnant women in Ni­geria.

Nigeria has three million malnourished chil­dren, placing it first in Africa and first overall in terms of the number of malnourished chil­dren worldwide, the United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) reported.

According to UNICEF, malnutrition is an un­acceptable global issue, and no country can afford to overlook it.

Due to the high prevalence of undernutrition, in 2019 the Government of Nigeria and the World Bank identified Oyo state in Southwestern Nigeria as one of the 12 highest-burden states in the coun­try. Around 35% of children under five are stunted and 65% are anaemic. Six out of ten children do not receive a diverse diet, and nearly nine out of ten are not fed an appropriate number of meals for their age. Only 5.8% of children achieve a minimum acceptable diet (National Population Commission, 2019).

The Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN) project is a GBP 202 million initiative of the Federal Government of Nigeria – financed by the International Development Association of the World Bank Group and the Global Financing Facil­ity – to tackle malnutrition in the 12 highest-burden states in Nigeria.

The World Health Organisation (WHO says malnutrition increases healthcare costs, reduces productivity, and slows economic growth, which can perpetuate a cycle of poverty and ill-health. Malnutrition in Nigeria is a major issue, affecting 35 million children under five, with 12 million stunt­ed, three million wasted, and 23.5 million anemic. The 2023 Cadre Report revealed 17.7 million hungry people, with one million suffering from acute food insecurity. The average reduction in stunting is only 1.4 percent per year. Nigeria’s future could be saved through high-impact preventive interventions in nutrition.

Former President of Ghana, John A. Kufour, said, “The socio-economic gains of investing in nutrition are significant and lasting. Shouldn’t we do what we can to prepare a healthier future for our children?”

Kufour said that investing N11,000 per child which would amount to N3 billion could save the three million children affected by malnutrition.”

Indeed, there is urgent need for investments and funding in nutrition to reduce malnutrition and improve diet quality. Failure to prevent mal­nutrition in children, including stunting, wasting, and underweight, leads to long-term, irreversible impacts on cognitive and physical growth.

The estimated child’s nutritional needs as at 2022 put at N11,000, which was about five dollars then per child per year.

According to experts treatment costs are nearly 10 times the current cost, with vitamin A supple­mentation costing 0.44 dollars. The experts therefore reasoned that with N11,000, a Nigerian child will have access to supplements such as zinc, vitamin A, and ORS for diarrhea, with the updated ORS supplement providing electrolytes as at 2022.

Supplements like multi-micronutrient powder, deworming, folic supplementation, iron fortifica­tion, and salt iodisation are essential for children to prevent malnutrition.

The total to deliver all these preventive interven­tions per child per year is N11,000. In 2022, when the analysis was done, the equivalent of 14 dollars was N6,000 at the CBN rate. Now that same 14 dollars is about N22,000, but the price in dollars is constant,

These figures were derived from global estimates and converted to naira. Obviously, it was better to prevent than to treat malnutrition, as it costs 131 dollars about (N220,000 today) to treat acute malnu­trition and severe acute malnutrition.

If you are making an investment case, it is better to prevent than to treat. Imagine that you spend N220, 000 that money can save the lives of 10 chil­dren from malnutrition. In a way, the cost of treat­ment is actually depriving 10 other children of the prevention they could have gotten in the first place. We need to prevent malnutrition. When malnutri­tion occurs, you need to treat it to save the child’s life, essentially.

If there is no treatment and prevention, it can lead to cognitive and growth impacts. It can lead to a loss of income for households. If a baby is sick, his mother will miss some days at work, which will lead to reduced income.

It costs about N220,000 ($130) to treat malnutri­tion through integrated management of acute mal­nutrition, which is 10 times the cost of prevention. That means that treatment is very expensive, and out of the three million children who are malnour­ished, not all of them are getting treatment. When that is not done, some of them will die, and when they survive, they end up stunted. Studies show that there is a relationship between stunting, mental growth, and cognitive impact, and that will affect the loss of income for the household, poor school performance, and increased morbidity.

Indeed, governments must increase funding for nutrition interventions and ensure the timely release of funds.

According to experts, government expenditure on nutrition is inadequate. At the national and sub­national levels, budgetary release is inadequate and does not match the budgetary allocation. Nigeria must ensure more money for nutrition and more nutrition for money.

Despite the reiterated commitment to prioritise funding nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions, this has yet to be achieved. Nigeria needs to ensure that it integrates other sectors of the economy, like agriculture, the environment, and water resources, among others, into nutrition interventions. This will make sure that every sector is playing its part.

There is also an urgent need to scale up nutrition interventions across the country, especially at the subnational levels, that is, at the states and their local government areas (LGAs).

In addition, preventive interventions like com­munity nutrition programmes, vitamin A and zinc supplements, micronutrient powders, deworming, iron-folic acid supplementation, iron fortification of staple foods, and salt iodisation should be adopted.

Unfortunately, governments are yet to provide adequate budgeting for nutrition.

Consequently, many programmes are con­strained even as effective implementation of pre­vention interventions cannot be accomplished. The result is increase in the rate of malnutrition, and more money spent on treatment.

Despite that departments have been created for easy allocation of funds, yet money on the budget line is not allocated completely.

Analysts believe that the rising level of multidi­mensional poverty in Nigeria exacerbates malnu­trition at all levels, particularly due to the prevailing food insecurity nationwide.

It is imperative that the Nigerian government should urgently prioritise significant investments in child protection and nutrition in future budget to curb malnutrition.

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