By Rauf Oyewole
Over the past years, Bauchi State has recorded a high rate of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition with data showing that over 90,000 kids were severely affected and were at the verge of losing their lives.
Nutrition experts and organisations have attributed the increase in the number of malnourished children to household poverty and biting hardship caused by the economic reform. They argued that families could no longer afford nutritious foods while many pregnant women bear the brunt particularly among the rural dwellers.
“More than 61% of (Bauchi State) children from six months to 23 months of age are undernutrition, malnourished. And approximately 92,000 children are wasting. 61% are stunted,” Dr. Nuzhat Rafique of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Bauchi Field Office, said in March this year while handing over RUTF and Small-Quantity Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplements to the state.
Habiba Ibrahim is a resident of Kwankiyel, 18km away from Darazo Town, she had her first son in July 2024, a malnourished baby. She expressed her fear of losing her first baby to lack of micro nutrients while the boy was sharply going down into severe malnutrition.
Her recent visit to Darazo Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition (IMAM) centre served as a life saving move. Habiba said she was given 14 sachets of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) for a week. She visited the facility three weeks back.
“I brought him here, when they weighed him, he was 6.2kg but after three weeks of taking the RUTF, he looks so healthy and that gives me more joy. It gives me peace of mind and I can’t explain how glad I’m today. His last weight is now 12.3kg,” she said.
Having realised the imminent danger of the growing rate of malnourished children in the state, the Bauchi State government took the advantage of the Child Nutrition Fund being anchored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) where RUTF and Small-Quantity Lipid-Based Nutrient Supplements (SQ-LNS) are provided under the matching fund.
Through the partnership, nutrition commodities valued at N600m have been procured for the State. Over 4,562 cartons of RUTF and 15,419 cartons of SQ-LNS.
Like Habiba Ibrahim, hundreds of women were seen in different parts of Bauchi State trooping out to take the supplements while massive recoveries from malnutrition are recorded.
According to Abdullahi Bello, a nutrition officer at the IMAM centre, Darazo LGA, explained the reason for sudden surge in uptake of the commodity, saying that most mothers have been inviting others to enroll their children in malnutrition care having seen the significant improvement in their kids.
Bello said that the Centre received 400 cartons of RUTF from the state government while favourable feedback has been recorded in the treatment of the menace.
A nutrition specialist with UNICEF Bauchi Field Office, Philomena Irene, attributed the increase in malnourished children to economic hardship experienced by thousands of households where families are not being able to provide nutritious food. She said that the Child Nutrition Fund has greatly assisted the kids in their chances of survival.
Irene disclosed that UNICEF is working with the State to access significant commodities for this year. She said that Governor Bala Mohammed has approved N500 million which is yet to be released.
If the fund is released, Bauchi will have a consignment worth N1billion from CNF.
Also, the Executive Chairman, Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Board, Dr. Rilwanu Mohammed, attributed the surge to inflation in the country. “The Federal Government’s survey showed that malnutrition is higher in seven states, including Bauchi.”
According to him, the state is one of the first states to use its money to scale up the fight against malnutrition. “We did this in partnership with UNICEF, we bought N600m supplements,” he said.
