By Abdulgafar Oladimeji
Kano state Emergency Management Agency, SEMA has raised alarm over the threat of malnutrition allegedly ravaging the 13 psychiatric rehabilitation centres operating under the management of the agency.
The Executive Secretary of SEMA, Abdullahi Saleh Jili in his remarks, during an advocacy visit to the agency by the Coalition of Civill Society Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria, CS SUNN said that psychiatric patients were been fed with diets that failed to comply with basic human nutrition standards.
According to Jili, funds budgeted to cater for the feeding of patients under the custody of the agency could not cater for their nutrition needs, adding that they were feed with staple foods namely rice and maize without proper supplements.
He said “the psychiatric patients don’t have anybody, they have lost their senses, they eat anything you give to them, they don’t know whether it is nutritious or not, they have no voice, we are their voice, we must pursue their nutrition interest.
“The state government give us money every month, we engage contractors, but honestly the money we receive for their feeding is not enough, we appeal to individuals and corporate bodies to help in this area, because with the kind of drugs they take, they eat more and they need highly nutritional foods.”
Jili said the agency has formally approached the state government with the request for an increase in the amount provided for the feeding of the patients, lamenting that the agency is faced with the problem of lack of releases of approved funds. “approval of funds is not our problem, releases of approved funds is our problem in the agency.”
