By Oye Chukwujekwu, Asaba
The wife of Delta State governor, Dame Edith Okowa, has kick-started the scaling up of nutrition initiative to eradicate malnutrition among children, women and the vulnerable at Unity Hall, Government House, Asaba.
She that a malnourished child would not contribute enough in the growth and development of the soceity.
According to her, to develop the society is to ensure proper nutrition of persons, stressing that mothers should know the importance of breast feeding their infants for at least first 100 days of their life.
She said that prior to the invention of SUN Initiative, she had implemented a similar programme, tagged, “O5 Initiative platform that was used to feed, take care of health challenges, help the vulnerable, women, handicaps and widows, while laying emphasis on sickle cell anemia.
She pointed out that the current administration in the state had cut across all basic aspects of the society advocating for nutrition and addressing market women to be aware that a healthy child is a healthy nation.
Also, the state Commissioner for Economic Planning, Dr. Kingsley Emu, said that his ministry had facilitated adequate budget for nutrition activities across key millennium development goals in the mitigation of mal-nutritions, adding that the movement is to support countries as they take action to prioritize food and nutrition security in their national programmes.
He said that the state government through the state Committee on Food and Nutrition has continued to advocate good policies in nutrition, adding that investing in scaling up nutrition will yield immediate returns, save lives, enable children and their mothers to have a better future, contribute to livelihoods, reduce poverty and contribute to the economic growth of nations which is the reason the state specific policy on food and nutrition and integrated strategic and coasted plan of action on nutrition in collaboration with UNICEF.
In a message delivered by the Chief Field Officer of UNICEF, Willbroad Ngambi, nutrition is of high importance in achieving the sustainable development goals particularly those related to hunger, child and maternal health, food security and education, adding that investment in nutrition is an investment to human capital and the scaling up nutrition movement relies on national leaders taking ownership and responsibility for delivering sustainable solutions to improve nutrition in their countries.
She commended the state government led by Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa and his wife for the O5 Initiative, effective and efficient primary healthcare services, a priority in the state agenda and for approving the creation of specific budget lines for nutrition starting from 2018 annual budget.
