By Ijeoma UKAZU
Millions of people around the world suffer from food insecurity and different forms of malnutrition because they cannot afford the cost of healthy diets.
Research has shown that food insecurity is associated with lower nutrient intakes, cognitive problems, birth defects, anaemia, aggression and anxiety amongst others.
Food insecurity and malnutrition are a global concern as it is embedded in the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. According to the UN, food insecurity predicts all forms of malnutrition including stunting, wasting, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity.
To address the large and severe problem of early childhood undernutrition caused by food security, experts advised that policymakers could maximize the effectiveness of agri-investment designed to achieve affordable food and overall child development goals.
According to a report released last year by the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, an analysis of 91 countries, including Nigeria, showed that half of the children aged six to 23 months globally are not being fed the minimum recommended number of meals a day. Two-thirds do not consume the minimum number of food groups they need to thrive.
Also, the 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, NDHS, said in Nigeria, among children aged six to 23 months, only 23 per cent have the minimum necessary dietary diversity, and only 42 per cent have minimum adequate meal frequency.
Health experts have continued to decry the nutrition implication of inadequate diets, especially for children under age five as this is a critical development period where optimal nutrition is required.
The UNICEF study also shows that most Nigerians were already unable to afford healthy diets due to pre-existing food security challenges, with an estimated 40.1 per cent not able to cater for their food expenditure. Likely, this will only be worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The UN agency lamented that children under the age of two are not getting the food or nutrients they need to thrive and grow well, leading to irreversible developmental harm.
It warned that the rising poverty, inequality, conflict, climate-related disasters, and health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are contributing to an ongoing nutrition crisis among the world’s youngest that has shown little sign of improvement in the last ten years.
The survey outcome according to UNICEF Nigeria Deputy Representative, Rushnan Murtaza said, “The findings of the report are clear: millions of young children are not being fed diets adequate for their growth and development.
Murtaza adds that “Poor nutritional intake in the first two years of life can harm children’s rapidly growing bodies and brains, impacting their futures. Now more than ever, with the ongoing COVID-19 disruptions, we need to reimagine a food system that improves the diets of young children, including in Nigeria.”
He said children carry the scars of poor diets and feeding practices for life, adding that an insufficient intake of nutrients found to support growth at an early age puts children at risk of poor brain development, weak learning, low immunity, increased infections, and, potentially, death.
The UNICEF Nigeria Deputy Representative pointed out that children under the age of two are most vulnerable to all forms of malnutrition – stunting, wasting (low weight for height), micronutrient deficiencies, overweight, and obesity – as a result of poor diets, due to their greater need for essential nutrients per kilogram of body weight than at any other time in life.
Globally, UNICEF estimates that more than half of children under the age of five with wasting -around 23 million children are younger than two years of age, while the prevalence of stunting increases rapidly between six months and two years, as children’s diets fail to keep pace with their growing nutritional needs.
In Nigeria, one out of every three children is stunted and one of every ten children is wasted. As a result, close to 17 million Nigerian children are undernourished (stunted and/or wasted), giving Nigeria the highest burden of malnutrition in Africa and the second highest in the world.
With this report, Nigeria is off track to achieving SDG2: Zero Hunger by 2030, as UNICEF urged to change this trajectory, the time to act is now to reimagine not just food, but health and social protection systems.
According to the UNICEF Associate Director on Data and Analytics, Mark Hereward said, “We are still losing too many young lives from largely preventable causes, often because of weak and underfunded health systems which have faced enormous pressure over the pandemic. In addition, the burden of these deaths is not carried equally around the world. Children in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia continue to face the highest risk of death in the world, and to bear the brunt of this child mortality burden.”
“If we are going to achieve the child mortality SDGs in all countries, we must redouble efforts to ensure access to effective and high-quality care along with the continued expansion of coverage of life-saving interventions.”
This was contained in its recent publication called, ‘Latest child mortality estimates reveal world remains off-track to meeting Sustainable Development Goals.’
The Executive Secretary, Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria, CS-SUNN, Mr Sunday Okoronkwo said, “stunting impairs both physical and mental growth of the child.
“For the physical growth, the child does not measure up to his/his mate. Mentally, the child’s brain growth is impaired which in the long run would affect the IQ (Intelligent Quotient). If this happens, in the long run, the child could be sickly and will grow up having some non-communicable diseases like diabetes.
“If he carries this sickness to the workplace, from time to time, he won’t be available to work and contribute to the workforce of the country which would directly affect the GDP of the country. As a nation, these leaders of tomorrow missing out on optimal nutrition would in the long run come back to bite us because you would lose the quality workforce you would have had if you had invested little monies in preventing or treating malnutrition,” he explained.
Okoronkwo adds that malnutrition has an impact on the education of the children going forward as well as impacts what they can contribute to the nation to grow the economy.
For the family, he said, the child cannot do well educationally or study courses that he may want to as his brain cannot carry the workload of that profession due to stunting.
He called on all stakeholders to invest in agribusinesses to combat food insecurity as well as achieve affordable food for all.