Nigeria ranks first in Africa and second in the world in terms of number of malnourished children.

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Nutrition Officer, Nkeiruka Enwelum, disclosed this at a recent media dialogue on child malnutrition in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital.

Quoting the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS 2018) data, Enwelum lamented the worsening situation of child malnutrition in Nigeria, which she said was alarming and required urgent attention.

She said the country is off track to achieve United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 2 aimed at achieving zero hunger by 2030.

Enwelum said 12 million children in Nigeria are stunted, 3M wasted and 23.5M anaemic due to malnutrition.

Speaking on the NDHS data, Enwelum said: “These are worrying statistics because they have impact on the wellbeing of our children. Malnutrition can expose children to illnesses and consequently contributes to likelihood of mortality.”

“The nutrition situation in the country requires urgent attention. We also need to focus on implementing preventive actions and where we are unable to prevent it, then there is need to put in place and facilitate access to treatment of all forms of malnutrition so that we can have a healthier population that can contribute to our economic growth”, Enwelum said.

Speaking at the event, UNICEF Communication Specialist, Dr Geoffrey Njoku, charged the media to mainstream issues around child malnutrition so as to prompt government to take necessary action to address the problem.

Speaking on the theme, “Investing in child malnutrition for the future”, Njoku said the issue around nutrition is huge but the money available to tackle the issue is not enough.

Njoku called on Nigerian government to increase funding for nutrition programming towards addressing malnutrition in the country.

According to Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS 2018), 12 million children in Nigeria are stunted while 3M wasted and 23.5M children in the country suffering from anaemia due to malnutrition.

Njoku charged government to jack up budgetary allocation for nutrition and step up efforts to address child malnutrition.

According to him, “The main objective of this media dialogue was to dissect issues around malnutrition so as to prompt journalist to do compelling stories that would attract the attention of government and other stakeholders to take necessary steps to address the challenge”, Njoku noted.