The Enugu State government, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health and the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) has established three Centres for Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) in the State.
Saga Gist reports that the action is in a bid to tackle cases of acute malnutrition among children.
The state nutrition officer, Dr Henrietta Ugwu, made this known in Enugu while speaking at a one day media engagement workshop organized by Civil Society Scaling-up Nutrition (CS-SUNN) in Enugu.
Ugwu said that through UNICEF and the Federal Ministry of Health, the state was able to set up the CMAM centres, which are located in Obollo-Afor, Abakpa Nike and Oji River.
She said: “Children are still very much malnourished. Children still go to bed hungry and we have malnourished children scattered all over the local governments in the State. There is no local government that does not have malnourished children.
“Currently in Enugu State, with the assistance of the Federal Ministry of Health and UNICEF, by March this year, we were able to establish three centres where malnourished children are taken care of.
“And since these three centres were established, we have been recording numbers of malnourished children even with the intensive routine immunization that we have carried. We just came out of the second round of modified integrated medical outreach.
“But I must commend the State Government for taking the lead, because malnourishment is a nationwide problem. But the Governor of Enugu State is very passionate about this and he has been funding the project adequately.”
She said that though the CMAM centres have been of immense help in addressing the situation, more centres are urgently needed in all the local government areas of the state.
“You see, we need to scale-up these CMAM centres to the rest of the local governments because malnutrition is not just in those three local governments where they are currently situated.
“From the reports and the referees that we’ve been getting, from other local governments, you see that we have them so high in the rest of the local government and these ones are indigent families. When you refer them to another local government, the issue is who transports them,” she added.
On his part, Enugu State coordinator of CS-SUNN, Dr Chuka Agunwa, revealed that Enugu State government had accepted to work with a five-year nutrition budget line which would go a long way in addressing the issue of malnutrition in the state.
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