Vice Chancellor, University of Benin, Professor Lilian Salami, and other stakeholders have raised alarm over the rising cost of living, which has led to malnutrition in children.
According to them, this has led to ill health of children and contributing to 50 percent of under-five mortality in Nigeria.
The Vice Chancellor, who was represented by Professor Adesina Ayinde, the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Ekenwan Campus, during a two-day workshop on Childhood Nutrition, organized by the Institute of Child Health, UNIBEN/UBTH in collaboration with the Faculty of Agriculture and Edo State Primary Health Care Development Agency in Benin City, noted that contemporary Nigeria had become difficult to live in with the very hostile economic environment.
“The prices of practically every item, including food have gone up. This has challenged food security of many families. Poverty has been noted to go hand in hand with malnutrition, and Nigeria is touted as the poverty capital of the world with 63 percent of the population affected.
“In such challenging circumstances, children who are the most vulnerable bear the brunt. This is clearly manifested by the level of malnutrition in the country today. With 33 percent of under five being stunted and 11.6 percent wasted, Nigeria has one of the highest burdens of malnutrition globally,” the Vice Chancellor said.
The two-day workshop designed to find new ways for providing nutrition for children, according to the Director of the Institute of Child Health, UNIBEN/UBTH, Professor Ayebo Sadoh, is a response to the challenging economy where there is poverty that is making malnutrition strive.
“The workshop is expected to give us counsel how to feed the child with cheaper alternatives that are highly nutritious if we must deal with the future. The challenging economy now affects the children,” she said.
Prof. Sadoh expressed appreciation to the Vice Chancellor of UNIBEN for providing a physical structure for the institute, disclosing that the Institute has been involve in the enlightening of the public on issues that affects them as well as run educational programmes on child health care and others.
In his lecture, Prof. Elijah Ewah disclosed that to have good nutrition, we need balanced diet that can be found in our locale and the child should be fed with varieties of food to avoid malnutrition.
According to him, eating a varied, well-balanced diet means eating a variety of foods from each of the five food groups daily in the recommended amount, and he demonstrated how to provide palatable food for the children.
He however pointed out that people are stressed and angry because of hunger and food insecurity caused by poor governance.
The Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Benin, Prof. Orhue said agriculture cannot be neglected, and advocated that when building a house, a space should be created for domestic gardening because we do not expect people from other countries to come and feed us.
In the same vein, the Executive Secretary, Edo State Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Omosigho Izedonmwen, enjoined Nigerians to recalibrate the economy and change their orientation by going back to giving healthy nutrition to children, saying, “If you have a car in your garage, have two chickens in your back yards,” he said.
Prof. Charles Eregie and other speakers also emphasized on the importance of exclusive breast feeding, which is the mother of all child survival intervention, the role of nutritious food as the best medicine, value addition in arable and livestock products and leveraging food processing for economic growth.
