80% Babies Malnourished

A malnourished baby

ABOUT 80 per cent of children under two years in the Central region are severely malnourished, a situation that is affecting their growth as well as intellectual development.

Samuel Sosi, Regional Nutritionist disclosed this at a sensitization workshop on 'Nutrition and Malaria Control for the Child Survival Project' (NMCCSP) in Cape Coast on Friday.

He said malnutrition also accounted for 54 per cent of deaths among children under five years.

He said this 'worrying trend' was as a result of insufficient household food security, inadequate maternal and child care as well as childhood diseases including diarrhea, malaria and measles.

It was in this regard that the Ghana Health Service in collaboration with World Bank is carrying out the NMCCSP in five regions of the country worst affected by malaria and malnutrition in order to help address the situation.

The beneficiary regions are Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Central and Volta with Central region having about 3,500 beneficiary communities.

The workshop was organized by the Central region's Health administration for district health directors, chief executives, coordinating directors of the various assemblies as well as other stakeholders in the health sector.

Mr. Sosi noted that malnutrition was a developmental issue which required the collective efforts of stakeholders to evolve measures to bring it to the barest minimum.

He explained that when the problem becomes chronic, it effects could be deadly among victims who mostly include pregnant women and children with acute anaemia.

He mentioned some of the effects as being underweight which could cause stunted growth in children.

Mr. Sosi said 34 per cent of children in the region were chronically malnourished and had stunted growth, placing third to the Eastern and Upper West regions.

According to the 2008 Ghana Demographic Health Survey, nutrition was a problem in Ghana and that people should know that obesity is a malnutrition problem which must be checked to prevent non-communicable diseases, he said.

He mentioned particularly the increasing number of obesity cases among women and children in the country and emphasized that Central region was second to Eastern region.

Hannah Adjei, National Programme Manager of the NMCCSP observed that 40 per cent of children in the country do not grow  properly with most of them having stunted growth which is affecting their performance at school and making them non productive.

She said the project therefore sought to put interventions in place to encourage mothers to give local and less expensive nutritional food to their children. She observed that a good diet was not about money.

Mrs. Adjei called on pregnant women to make it a habit to eat very well to prevent them and their babies from being anaemic.

She also suggested that family planning should be incorporated into adolescent reproductive health to avoid teenage pregnancy.

Ghanaians should also cut down on the intake of meat, fat, sugar and salt and exercise regularly to keep them in shape always.

Mrs. Adjei urged the people to endeavour to practice good sanitation to combat malaria.

The Regional Minister, Ama Benyiwa-Doe said government had put in place many interventions to help control malaria in the country and asked district chief executives to collaborate with the health authorities to ensure good sanitary conditions at all times.

On nutrition she expressed regret that lack of basic knowledge about balanced diets with local cuisines by most women in the rural areas in particular, had rendered a lot of children malnourished.

GNA