A child’s body and brain need all the nutrients required for good nutrition and healthy growth. Consequently, pregnant women are advised to prioritise the growth of their unborn child by consuming foods high in vital minerals like calcium and iron. Therefore, when they don’t eat at all or eat very little, they have fewer nutrients to pass on to their unborn children. This leads to Anaemia in mothers and malnutrition, stunting, wasting, under weight in children. Anaemia affects 7.8 million pregnant women in Nigeria.
Nigeria has three million malnourished children, placing it first in Africa and first overall in terms of the number of malnourished children worldwide, the United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) reported.
According to UNICEF, malnutrition is an unacceptable global issue, and no country can afford to overlook it.
The World Health Organisation (WHO says malnutrition increases healthcare costs, reduces productivity, and slows economic growth, which can perpetuate a cycle of poverty and ill-health. Malnutrition in Nigeria is a major issue, affecting 35 million children under five, with 12 million stunted, three million wasted, and 23.5 million anemic. The 2023 Cadre Report revealed 17.7 million hungry people, with one million suffering from acute food insecurity. The average reduction in stunting is only 1.4 percent per year. However, with just N11,000 ($14,00), Nigeria’s future could be saved through high-impact preventive interventions.
Former President of Ghana, John A. Kufour, said, “The socio-economic gains of investing in nutrition are significant and lasting. Shouldn’t we do what we can to prepare a healthier future for our children?”
Kufour said that investing N11,000 per child which would amount to N3 billion could save the 3 million children affected by malnutrition.
Indeed, there is urgent need for investments and funding in nutrition to reduce malnutrition and improve diet quality. Failure to prevent malnutrition in children, including stunting, wasting, and underweight, leads to long-term, irreversible impacts on cognitive and physical growth. Nigeria’s 2023 GDP is N506.6 billion, and failing to prevent malnutrition results in a loss of N76 billion, or 15 percent of the GDP.
It is estimated that a child’s nutritional needs are currently estimated to cost N11,000, which is about five dollars per child per year. Treatment costs are nearly 10 times the current cost, with vitamin A supplementation costing 0.44 dollars. She said with N11,000, a Nigerian child will have access to supplements such as zinc, vitamin A, and ORS for diarrhea, with the updated ORS supplement providing electrolytes.
Supplements like multi-micronutrient powder, deworming, folic supplementation, iron fortification, and salt iodisation are essential for children to prevent malnutrition.
The total to deliver all these preventive interventions per child per year is N11,000. This time last year, when we did the analysis, 14 dollars were N6,000 at the CBN rate. Now that same 14 dollars is about N11,000, but the price in dollars is constant,
These figures were derived from global estimates and converted to naira. Obviously, it was better to prevent than to treat malnutrition, as it costs 131 dollars (N100,000) to treat acute malnutrition and severe acute malnutrition.
If you are making an investment case, it is better to prevent than to treat. Imagine that if you don’t prevent malnutrition in one child and you spend N100, 000, that money can save the lives of 10 children from malnutrition. In a way, the cost of treatment is actually depriving 10 other children of the prevention they could have gotten in the first place. We need to prevent malnutrition. When malnutrition occurs, you need to treat it to save the child’s life, essentially.
If there is no treatment and prevention, it can lead to cognitive and growth impacts. It can lead to a loss of income for households. If a baby is sick, his mother will miss some days at work, which will lead to reduced income.
It costs N100,000 ($130) to treat malnutrition through integrated management of acute malnutrition, which is 10 times the cost of prevention. That means that treatment is very expensive, and out of the three million children who are malnourished, not all of them are getting treatment. When that is not done, some of them will die, and when they survive, they end up stunted. Studies show that there is a relationship between stunting, mental growth, and cognitive impact, and that will affect the loss of income for the household, poor school performance, and increased morbidity.
Indeed, governments must increase funding for nutrition interventions and ensure the timely release of funds.
According to experts, government expenditure on nutrition is inadequate. At the national and subnational levels, budgetary release is inadequate and does not match the budgetary allocation. Nigeria must ensure more money for nutrition and more nutrition for money.
Despite the reiterated commitment to prioritise funding nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions, this has yet to be achieved. Nigeria needs to ensure that it integrates other sectors of the economy, like agriculture, the environment, and water resources, among others, into nutrition interventions. This will make sure that every sector is playing its part.
There is also an urgent need to scale up nutrition interventions across the country, especially at the subnational levels, that is, at the states and their local government areas (LGAs).
In addition, preventive interventions like community nutrition programmes, vitamin A and zinc supplements, micronutrient powders, deworming, iron-folic acid supplementation, iron fortification of staple foods, and salt iodization should be adopted.
Unfortunately, governments is yet to provide adequate budgeting for nutrition.
Consequently, many programmes are constrained even as effective implementation of prevention interventions cannot be accomplished. The result is increase in the rate of malnutrition, and more money spent on treatment.
Despite that departments have been created for easy allocation of funds, yet money on the budget line is not allocated completely.
Analysts believe that the rising level of multidimensional poverty in Nigeria exacerbates malnutrition at all levels, particularly due to the prevailing food insecurity nationwide.
The time for the Nigerian government to prioritise massive investments in nutrition and child protection in its next budget is now.
