‘There is treatment for malnutrition, seek care’

Maryam Suleiman is 31 years old; a mother of four kids. Her last daughter, Bilkisu Alkasim fell ill suddenly and was taken to hospital. She says: “She started having a fever, then she began stooling, followed by vomiting and then suddenly she stopped eating and started losing weight at an alarming rate. I took her […]

Maryam Suleiman is 31 years old; a mother of four kids. Her last daughter, Bilkisu Alkasim fell ill suddenly and was taken to hospital.
She says: “She started having a fever, then she began stooling, followed by vomiting and then suddenly she stopped eating and started losing weight at an alarming rate. I took her to several hospitals all to no avail”.
She narrated how she had taken her baby to several hospitals before she was advised at the last one to take her to a clinic that runs a Community-based Management for Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) programme.
According to her, since she came to the clinic, she had noticed great improvement in her baby’s condition. “She has gained some weight, as she even eats better,” she said.
Another mother, Hussaina Abdullahi, who is about 30 years old, brought her daughter, Maryam, eight months old to the hospital.
She revealed that she gave birth to her at home, but that at the time of her birth, Maryam was quite big like a normal baby.
She looks down at her baby laying in her hands and says, “all of a sudden she started losing weight and we took her to hospital but they advised that we need to continue to treat her and when she gets to her eight month, I should come to this centre that there is a substance that they give that will help her gain her weight and restore her health.”
She explained that at the centre she was given four packets of the therapeutic food to feed her daughter with and asked to come back after a few weeks for checkup.
Her words: “Since I started giving her the packaged groundnut, her condition has improved”.
These are testimonies of women who rushed to the Dandawaki PHC, under Zaitawa ward, Kano Municipal to seek treatment for their malnourished children because they had the information to work with.
According to the Arjan De Wagt of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF),  malnutrition is responsible for over 1,000 deaths of children under five out of the 2,300 that die daily from other childhood diseases.
UNICEF Nigeria Representative, Jean Gough, noted at the launch of the recent finding of malnutrition that Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) was piloted in Gombe and Kebbi states in 2009 and has now been introduced in 11 northern Nigerian states where malnutrition poses the greatest threat.
Gough explained that CMAM treats acutely malnourished children from six months to five years old on an out-patient basis but that more than 830,000 children have been cured in the programme with the cure rate rising steadily – currently standing at 85 per cent.
She lamented that of the remaining children, about two per cent do not respond to treatment and are referred to hospitals; the current mortality rate is just one per cent, while the other children have defaulted from the programme.
 “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,” she said.
The UNICEF Nigeria rep noted: “We need greater investment in Nigeria’s future by investment in good nutrition.”
There are approximately 1.7 million severely acutely malnourished children under five in Nigeria – accounting for a 10th 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.
Children are given highly nutritious Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) during the sessions and mothers and caregivers are provided with supplies of RUTF to feed the child at home.
But for health workers like Maryam Abdullahi, in charge of Dandawaki PHC in Kano Municipal, adequate provision and supply of the therapeutic food is key.
She said: “We give them the highly nutritious Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) but we cannot let them take the food without the medicine. When government provides the medicine we will give them free, but honestly for many years now there has been no provision of drugs from the government.”
According to her, allowing them give the RUFT to the children without the medicine will lead to diarrhoea.
She says: “We ask them to give them millet, and the amount of the millet is they will get six cups, then soya beans three cups then groundnut one cup and then we tell them how to prepare it, and make the food for the children.
“Then there is ‘kunun gyada’ (groundnut pastry). We only use groundnut in its preparation, then later beans porridge with leaves. We also advise them to give them fruits like pineapple, and banana and oranges, this should be given at least once in a week,” she said.
 “But we advise that mothers wash their hands before they feed their children with whatever food they have prepared and they need to taste it.
“Often times mothers do not bother to taste the food before feeding their children, at least to know if its edible or not, and when the child refused to eat it they just discard the food, or even beat the child,” she stated.
She called on mothers to seek care for their children saying, “we have the food they can use to nourish their children, but they don’t know. We advise them on how to prepare our local food; we don’t tell them to buy meat or eggs, kidney but we advise them to prepare our local food,” she explained.