Experts call for empowerment of women to break the circle of malnutrition in Nigeria

Tag malnutrition a global pandemic

LAGOS, Nigeria – Experts in nutrition have underscored the need to empower women if Nigeria must break the circle of malnutrition. Experts, comprising Professor Ibiyemi Olayiwola, Dr. Adepeju Adeniran and Josephine Mensah Chukwunwenike all made the call at a forum on Empowering women to break the circle of malnutrition in Nigeria, put together by Media Craft Associates.  

They spoke even as the World Health Organisation (WHO) made it clear that 1.9 billion adults are either overweight or obese; 462 million are underweight, while 52 million under-fives are suffering from wasting, where they have a low weight for height.

In her presentation, the lead speaker, Professor  Ibiyemi  Olasunbo Olayiwola of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Agriculture Abeokuta (UNAB) made it very clear that the  term malnutrition refers to under-nutrition and over-nutrition. By definition, the professor posited that  individuals are  malnourished  or suffer from under nutrition if their diet does not  provide them with adequate quantity and quality of food and if they cannot  fully utilize the food they eat due to illness, while individual suffer from over-nutrition  if they consume more nutrients than their body requires, stressing that the excess nutrients  consumed develops into obesity, which increases the risk of serious health  condition such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, cancer and type 2 diabetes.

Anchoring her projections on 2003 to 2018 research, she explained that under-nutrition is prevalent among women between the age bracket of 15 to 49, while malnutrition has resulted in deaths and disability among many in the population. As she puts it, the underlying causes at the family level include insufficient access to food, inadequate maternal and child care practices, poor water sanitation and inadequate health services.

For these reasons, she argued that women need empowerment to be able to participate in decision making at all levels of life, stressing that empowering women economically advances the health, education and economic security of their families; makes it easy for women and girls to live a life free from violence and that it benefits the nation, engendering poverty reduction, improved national  economic performance and  nutrition.

 Besides, she is of the view that empowering women brings about peace and security which in turn shapes women for participation in leadership. Quoting the United Nations 2010 statistics, Professor Ibiyemi Olayiwola asserted 350,000 women die from preventable complications related to  pregnancy and childbirth.

She suggested that women should be empowered in the areas of  health, nutrition, household economy, education and agriculture.

The professor Dietetics and Nutrition explained protein requirement is usually very small during early pregnancy but that it increases as time progresses but protein requirement for pregnant women is 54 percent greater than any other nutrient, stressing that inadequate protein intake during pregnancy leads to low birth weight babies.

For a change, she advocated for adequate nutrition for breastfeeding mothers, behavioral change, micronutrients de-worming interventions, complementary and therapeutic feeding intervention.

But to break the vicious circle of malnutrition, she posited that women must be at the centre of development and governance, sustainable development goals, reduction of food insecurity, improved nutrition and food safety, with special focus on the first 1000 days of life and improvement in maternal and fetal growth.

She called for deployment of appropriate messages to facilitate behavioral changes at individual, household and community level including women to women training adding that proper nourishment builds up the immune system to battle pandemics, such as Coronavirus.  She thanked Media Craft for the initiative and called on Nigeria to come together to kick out malnutrition the way polio was kicked out.

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In her paper, Social determinants of health of an individual, Dr. Adepeju Adeniran, National co-chair at Women in Global Health Nigeria called for nutritional policies targeted at the home stressing that the choice women make are determined by literacy, income and available choices in bargain shopping, which is getting the most value for household feeding. For her, key areas for intervention in nutrition policy is the information about the food item, availability and affordability.

She explained that malnutrition which range from mild to severe   can be detected through the eyes, hair and skin which is useful in predicting learning ability. She said that the status of your immunity is determined by how much you eat as a child and what you eat.

While calling for improvement in the income of women, she explained that there is the need to subsidise sources of animal and plant based protein, stressing  that though animal protein is expensive, plant base protein, which are cheaper include soya bean which she said comes in form of soya bean powder, soya bean oil or even soya bean milk. Dr.Adeniran suggested crayfish and groundnuts as other cheap sources, stressing that the main course in a meal should be protein, whereas in Nigeria people consume protein as an encouragement. She called on women to be creative in preparation of meals and that while those who can should do chicken or eggs, generally, women should look at using beans in preparing staple foods such as Akara, Moimoi among other things. She equally encourage women to development the habit of home  gardening adding that those who have no space can plant vegetables in plastic buckets around the home as source of plant based protein.

 She  pointed out that malnutrition has done more harm than good  and called on government and policy makers to take the message to local areas  via  television and radio the way it has been done with COVID-19, stressing that malnutrition has done more harm than good. Dr. Adeniran advised husbands to assist their wives by increasing their purchasing power and in the areas of farming adding that the health of the  nutritional health of the children is very important for their future development.

In her contribution, Mrs. Josephine Mensah Chukwunwenike called on government to make land available for women to farm, and that emphasis must be placed on child nutrition, suggesting that the child in the home should have full eggs, while the father can skip egg, since he does not really need it. She said studies have confirmed that children who are malnourished are not sound intellectually. Besides, she said women must take care of themselves to be able to meet up with the nutritional needs of their families

She advised women to look at the immediate environment for sources of protein like cheese, Yoghurt, Fura da nono(North),  Wara(Yoruba), legumes, egusi soup, Okpa, Ukwa(East) beans etc and produce them locally to avoid infection.

In his short remarks, Chief Executive Officer, Media Craft Associates, Mr. John Ehiguese  said the campaign to kick out malnutrition remains a broad campaign that will run till next year. He said the series of webinar is just one of part of what the organisation has in store to drive the campaign. “We are going to radio, we will produce posters. We call on you to join us to contribute your quota in our quest to eradicate malnutrition”