Project needs scaleup after saving 200,000 kids from death

The United Nations Children’s Fund is pushing to scale up a programme that has helped save more than 200,000 children from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in the last six years. At least 642 sites for community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) have opened in 11 northern states since the programme piloted in Kebbi and Gombe […]

The United Nations Children’s Fund is pushing to scale up a programme that has helped save more than 200,000 children from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in the last six years.

At least 642 sites for community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM) have opened in 11 northern states since the programme piloted in Kebbi and Gombe in 2009.

Over one million children with SAM have been admitted into the programme, according to UNICEF.

“More than 830,000 children have been cured, with the cure rate rising steadily—currently standing at 85%,” it said in a statement.

Without the treatment, up to 1,000 children aged under five die each day—a total 361,000 a year.

“The Government of Nigeria is committed to reaching more children with CMAM,” said Linus Awute, health permanent secretary.

“We cannot accept that Nigerian children continue to die of malnutrition and that our potential future leaders should be diminished by its effects.”

Scale up

“We must scale-up CMAM in Nigeria. It is a proven high-impact intervention that is saving lives and helping Nigerian children reach their full potential through a good start in life,” Jean Gough, UNICEF country representative in Nigeria.

“We need greater investment in Nigeria’s future by investment in good nutrition,” she added.

The Fund’s chief of nutrition, Arjan De Wagt, told a news conference in Abuja that the rates of malnutrition remained high, with Nigeria accounting for 10% of about 17.3 million children with SAM around the world.

Two out of three children with SAM live in northern Nigeria, where 11 states are most affected, said De Wagt.

Recent data published by the Emergency Nutrition Network showed the number of children under age five with SAM has risen to 1.7 million—with two out of three of them unable to receive treatment in the 11 states where CMAM has been introduced.

$160 per child

CMAM uses volunteers to identify children with severe acute malnutrition and bring them to local health centres where they are placed on a diet of ready-to-use therapeutic foods (a high protein paste of peanut butter, milk, vegetable oil and mineral vitamins).

UNICEF said it was in talks with two local firms to begin production of the food (popularly called “plumpy nuts”) within Nigeria in hopes of reducing the cost of its purchase and transport to sites where they are needed.

CMAM for a single child costs N31,840 (around $160) and plumpy nuts accounts for 60% of total cost, around $76.

The health ministry said it was in ongoing consultative meeting to supply plumpy nuts to CMAM sites, and to ensure commodities used at the site are placed on essential medicines list.

States with CMAM sites where the intervention has been on include Sokoto, Gombe, Kebbi, Zamfara, Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Katsina, Yobe, Kano, Jigawa.