He was born malnourished, and after a year and six months, the boy still looked like a six-month-old baby, with swollen feet, red eyes and persistent health complications. He later becomes severely malnourished.
His parents attributed the boy’s condition to evil spirits and even administered the “supposed appropriate treatment’’ on him, yet his condition deteriorated.
This is the pathetic story of young Buba Modibbo, who was severely malnourished.
Aisha Mohammed, the 22-year-old mother of Buba, said the boy’s condition persisted until her parents met women volunteers who comb remote communities searching for malnutrition cases.
She said that the volunteers took them to the nearest Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM), where they told their story.
But unfortunately, the boy’s case was already confirmed as Severe Acute Malnourished (SAM), which narrows his chances of survival to just one remedy- Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), known as plumpy nut, very effective for the treatment of malnutrition cases if the child has no other health complications.
Coming to the CMAM centre could not save the situation because of no single RUTF available at the centre or anywhere else in the state.
Like Modibbo, many severely malnourished children visit CMAM centres but no RUTF to restore their hopes of ever living a normal life.
According to experts, malnutrition or undernutrition is caused by a lack of nutrients, either due to poor diet or not eating enough of the right food in its right proportion.
Also, malnutrition in all form is a public health problem of epidemic proportion, which also plays an important role in the economic burden of society and the country.
Once malnutrition reaches a severe or an acute stage in a child, that child’s situation cannot be reversed ordinarily.
The only solution after treating the child’s health complications is to feed them on RUTF.
Gombe State ran out of stock of RUTF since October 2020.
Since then, apart from the innumerable new cases, the children that did not complete their doses by the time the stock ran out had relapsed into an even more severe state than they were before they began treatment.
Dr Abdurahman Shuaibu, the Executive Secretary, Gombe State Primary Health Care Development Agency, said the supply of RUTF was a collaboration between the state government and UNICEF.
Shuaibu said that the state government in 2020 released N25 million to procure 1,159 cartons of RUTF.
He said that because of the high prevalence of malnourished children in the state and the country, the cases were still high no matter the effort put in place.
“Our stunting rate in the state is 44 per cent, one of the highest in the country.
“Our underweight is about 26 per cent, our SAM rate is 1.3 per cent, no matter the number of resources you put in, you can still go to the facility and see malnourished children because the number is high,” he said.
According to him, nutrition is not just about the issue of RUTF but need a multi-sectoral approach.
“Malnutrition has to do with health education; we have cases whereby a lot of parents do not know the importance of breast milk to children from birth to six months.
“Many women do not give breast milk to children because there is a lack of awareness about the importance of breast milk.
“Exclusive breastfeeding has long term health benefit; it contains all the nutrients an infant needs in the first six months and also protects the child against childhood diseases,” he said.
According to him, some of the malnutrition cases resulted from infection from water, food and poor hygiene.
The secretary said that the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, in collaboration with Federal Teaching Hospital Gombe and other relevant agencies, had started producing micronutrients.
He said that the nutrients, basically for children, is meant to tackle malnutrition issues in the state.
Mrs Ronas Amusa, the Gombe State Nutrition Officer, said the state government had produced 30,000 sachets of complementary feeds, and they had since begun distributing them to moderately malnourished children.
She said the state government also purchased 1,159 cartons of RUTF and the remaining one supplied by the Federal Government through UNICEF in 2020.
Amusa said that for now, there is no single RUTF in the state because of high demand.
She advised parents to concentrate on locally available food like beans, millet, groundnut and sorghum as a preventive measure.
Malam Alhassan Yahya, the Chairman, Maternal Newborn and Child Health Coalition, Gombe State, a group of professionals in diverse fields advocating for improvement in child and maternal health, said the rate of SAM in Gombe State was alarming, and the government is very much aware of the situation.
Yahya commended the government for releasing money to produce complementary feeds; however, they noted that such effort was not enough.
“Complementary feeding is just a preventive measure, what of those children that reached the level of SAM, complementary feeding cannot work for them.
“The only alternative is the procurement of RUTF since there are budgetary allocations for nutrition in line ministries, but the 2021 nutrition budget is yet to be released.
“Our fear is, even if those children survive it, they might end up with low IQ, thereby becoming a nuisance to the society.
“We are urging the government to do the needful in that regard to save the lives of our children,” he said.
He further said that even though purchasing RUTF was capital intensive, and it is equally important to consider the future of those affected.
Mrs Comfort Mukollo, Gombe State Coordinator, Civil Society Scaling-Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN), said the complementary feeding was specifically for moderately malnourished children as it cannot be used to treat it SAM.
“The only treatment is RUTF, normally procured by UNICEF through counterpart funding from the state government and right now RUTF is out of stock in the state.’’
“The children that reached the level of SAM, their situation cannot be reversed; I am afraid they might just die,” she said.
She commended the state government for steps taken towards complementary feeding, which is a preventive measure, adding that it would go a long way in addressing malnutrition.
Mallam Sani Jauro, Director-General, Ahmed Kawu Heart for Children Initiative, a Gombe-based NGO, advised the state government to look inward and see how they could enlighten the public on malnutrition.
“The government should use the agriculture extension workers across the nooks and crannies of the state to enlighten local people on the type of crop to cultivate to ensure that their children are well fed.’’
He said most of the children that were malnourished were children that live in rural areas.
Jauro commended the state government for looking inward to identify a complementary feed, noting that such effort would complement existing ones in addressing some aspects of the menace.
“The complementary feed produced by Gombe State Government will eliminate the likelihood of Severe Acute Malnutrition in the state soon.’’
According to him, the problem with Africans is inferiority complex “they strongly believed that it is the only RUTF that can solve the problem of SAM.
“This is because the manufacturers made us have that believe that only their product can salvage the situation.
“They always say our commodity is not qualitative as theirs. So when are we going to come of age to start utilising what we have?
“If I should advise government, they should quickly engage specialist, particularly at ABU Zaria since they have the Institute for Agriculture Research there and a lot of investigations have been done on RUTF.’’
Jauro said instead of NGOs to continue engaging the government to release the money budgeted for nutrition to purchase RUTF, and they should encourage the government to channel the money into research at the institute to produce RUTF.
“I am sure they can do it; the outcome may even be better than the RUTF supplied by UNICEF,” he said.
Concerned citizens and relevant authorities have continued to lament the alarming cases of malnourished children in Gombe State and called for concerted efforts to address the challenge.
They also insisted that unless more drastic measures were taken to curb the menace, infected children might become a nuisance to society, as they are prone to have low IQ even if they survived. (NANFeatures)
