Mr Zubairu Umar, a pharmacist with the Kano State Ministry of Health, has said that the high rate of malnourished children in Nigeria was adversely affecting her Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Umar spoke during the opening of a two-day workshop on: “ Basic Nutrition and Food Safety’’, organised for stakeholders on Tuesday in Kano.
It was organised by the Scaling up Nutrition Business Network in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Funds (UNICEF) and the Kano State Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KACCIMA).
The pharmacist said that apart from the health implication, malnutrition had also affected the country’s economic growth and resulted in low enrolment of children into schools.
According to him, underfeeding can also result in their low contribution toward national development.
“About one million children die before their fifth year, which really affects the economic output,’’ he said.
The health expert said that to reduce the menace, the Federal Government had since 2017 earmarked N1.2 billion as its part its counterpart funding for five years.
Umar said that UNICEF would also provide matching grants to be used for the procurement of Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic Food (RUTF) to be distributed nationwide.
He said that RUTF is food for the treatment of acute malnutrition, which if not tackled within 1,000 days, will be irreversible and will lead to stunting.
The Director-General of KACCIMA, Mr Tijjani Aliyu, commended the efforts of the organiser for such initiative.
Aliyu said that the chamber had lots of role to play in reducing malnutrition rate as it was designed to improve the living conditions of the society.
He said; “the chamber has industrialists and members that are into food production, therefore, there is a role for value addition on what they produce.”
Earlier, Ms Ibiso Ivy, the Acting Coordinator of the Network, said that the training was part of the Memorandum of Understanding {MoU} with KACCIMA to improve nutrition.
Ivy said that it was to improve the knowledge and the understanding around basic nutrition and food safety among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) employees with no formal training in nutrition.
“At the end of the training, participants will be able to differentiate between food, nutrients and nutrition.
“They will understand the classification of food into different groups, name key nutrients and discuss their importance in the body,’’ the acting coordinator said. (NAN)
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