Global Alliance For Improved Nutrition (GAIN), has launched the Enhancing Access to Safe and Nutritious Diets (ENSAND), in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
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The Country Director, Dr Michael Ojo said the ENSAND project would improve the dietary quality of vulnerable children from the bottom of pyramid households through the National Home- Grown School Feeding Programme in Kebbi, Kaduna and Federal Capital Territory by improving the supply and consumption of eggs.
Dr Ojo said the five- year initiative was core element of the GAIN country programme focusing on supporting the supply and demand for nutritious food and ensuring healthier diets for all, especially the most vulnerable.
“We believe that the way to achieve this goal is to work together with parents including governments, businesses, academia, civil society at local, country and global.
“We are aware that to improve the nutritional status of vulnerable children, we must work diligently, collaborate and tame a multi-sectoral approach.
“This is why in the design of the ENSAND project, GAIN emphasised the need to work with all the ctrical egg value chain actors including the Poultry Association of Nigeria, National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, NHGSFP, the host state governments, state lead egg aggregators and other line Ministries to achieve the objectives of the project,” Dr Ojo added.
The Kebbi State Governor who was at the launch represented by his Chief of staff, Mr Attahiru Machido said his administration keyed into the Enhancing Access To Safe and Nutritious Diets Project, ENDSAND of Global Alliance for Nutrition, GAIN to break the age long believe in the state that children eating egg was a taboo.
The Governor said the state government was prepared to collaborate with GAIN to nip the problem in the bud and that the project would enable them capture as many children as possible and become number one state that eliminated malnutrition in the country.
“This project will help us in breaking that taboo so that our children can start eating egg, have normal and healthy growth. We want to capture as many children as possible. We want to ensure that we become number one state that eliminated malnutrition in the country.”
He said the government would provide both financial and human support to ensure this programme succeed.
“The sustainability is that the state government is 100% behind it. As long as this government remains, this programme will be sustained and supported,” he added.
In his goodwill message, the Minister of Health, represented by Director, Head of Nutrition, Ladede Kulabah-Yebisi said the Ministry saw this project as a very laudable one because Nigerian society was faced with triple burden of malnutrition, overweight and underweight and other high micro nutrients deficiency.
The Minister said the enhanced access to Nutrition would ensure that children between 6-9months old at least had access to egg at least once a week would boost their protein intake because egg rich in protein, fat and other minerals.
According to him, the project will ensure parents and caregivers have access to where they can get egg and also ensure the children grow well, learn well and grow healthy and contribute productively at the place of work.
“We at the ministry identify with this project, we will work with GAIN every step of the way to make sure the project is implemented well, document it and also scale it up in other states. We want every child to have access to egg and other nutritious food everyday of they life” said the Minister.”
In his own remarks, the Minister of Budget and National Nationals Planning, Alhaji Atiku Bagudu commended GAIN for the bold initiative aimed at fighting malnutrition in Nigeria.
Alhaji Bagudu, who was represented by Mrs. Nelson Chito described egg as the cheapest protein in the market, encouraged families that could afford it to feed their children with it.
He also urged the GAIN to expand the project to other states to ensure that every Nigerian child has access to egg and other nutritious food.
On her side, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Dr Betta Edu, represented by project manager, Hon. Maggrette Prince said that Home Grown School Meals programme of government on which the ENDSAND project was anchored had the potentials through coordinated multisectoral and postulated efforts and partnership to contribute to enhancing food and nutrition security in the households and communities all over the country.
She said the administration of President Bola Tinubu was committed to restructuring the programme in line with his Renewed Hope Agenda towards ending poverty, reducing the number of out of school children and eliminating malnutrition in school aged children.
“Recently at a meeting in Paris, we made a commitment to include children in military and para-military schools, out of school children and children in various settings, which we will publish.
“We are also committed to encouraging school farms and gardens to support the programme implementation. We have also identified small holder farmers and vendors as critical stakeholders to foster easier and cheaper access to egg and other nutritious foods.”
She called on domestic and international actors as well as partners to address the school basket initiative, which she believed would help to enrich the future of our children.
The project’s strategic approach targets both out-of-school and in-school children.
The Global Alliance For Improved Nutrition, GAIN, is a Swiss-based foundation launched at the United Nations in 2022 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition.
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