In the news: Nigeria Health Watch: Peanuts, Millet, Beans: simple foods helping to stem Kano’s malnutrition crisis
Who We Are
"WE AIM TO ADVOCATE GOOD NUTRITION IN ORDER TO BREAK THE VICIOUS CYCLE OF MALNUTRITION"
According to UNICEF, "There are approximately 1.7 million severely acutely malnourished children under five in Nigeria – accounting for a tenth of the global total. Nearly a thousand Nigerian children die of malnutrition-related causes every day – a total of 361,000 each year. Acute malnutrition also leads to stunting of children causing life-long physical limitations and can reduce intellectual capacity" -UNICEF (VIEW ARTICLE) Malnutrition leads to impaired mental and physical development of children, it therefore fundamentally constitutes impairment to the social and economic development of the developing countries like Nigeria. One million children under five, die every year in Nigeria, 35% of them due to causes attributed to malnutrition. This makes Nigeria one of the six countries that accounts for half of all child deaths from malnutrition worldwide. In the north, half of all children under five are stunted, and one in five suffers from acute malnutrition. |
NURTURE-ALL Foods aim to advocate good nutrition in order to break the vicious cycle of malnutrition at all levels. The cycle of malnutrition starts from the womb where the foetus does not get enough nutrient for appropriate growth. If the baby survives miscarriage, it is delivered as an underweight, underdeveloped baby. With inadequate breast milk from its malnourished mother, baby is not fed enough milk nutrients for proper growth. Malnourished mothers give birth to malnourished children, creating a cycle that continues for generations. Malnutrition at an early age leads to reduced physical and mental development during childhood. Stunting for example, affects more than 147 million pre-school children in developing countries. If children don’t get the right food in the first two years of life, the damage done to their physical growth is irreversible. Acting during that critical period of growth is essential because the goal in addressing malnutrition is to not only to treat it when it happens, it’s also to prevent it from happening in the first place. Without adequate nutrition at early age, children grow into malnourished adults, weak and underdeveloped and poor as they have no strength to study, work and earn a living. When a weak malnourished adult becomes pregnant, she has not got enough nutrients to share with her foetus, the cycle starts again! This has profound implications for health and for human development, and presents a major obstacle to attainment of Sustainable Development Goals in the country and globally. Most diseases of adult and children have their roots in poor nutrition. In communities where children malnutrition has been reduced by at least 40%, diseases such as kwashiorkor, marasmus, diarrhoea and measles have been significantly reduced. When children are well fed before the age of 5 years, they do not have stunted growth. Stunted growth has been associated with development of maternal morbidities such as vesico vaginal fistula (VVF).
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