The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF has launched a five-year programme in Gombe State, code-named Progressing Action on Resilient System for Nutrition Through Innovation and Partnership, (PARSNIP) aimed at ending preventable deaths of children in the wake of climate change.
The project being implemented by UNICEF will begin in Kwami Local Government Area of Gombe State as a learning centre and implemented in Dukku and Kaltungo Local Government Areas before it will be scaled up in the remaining LGAs across the state.
It is being funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office with a focus on the prevention of malnutrition before it occurs.
The UNICEF Chief of Bauchi Field Office on PARSNIP programme, Dr Tushar Rane, while valuing the partnership UNICEF had with the Gombe State Government, especially Kwami LGA, said the project was a comprehensive package to ensure that all interventions for children go to the right place at the right time.
He said UNICEF was committed to providing the needed technical support for it to succeed.
Mr Rane said the state was fortunate to be among the beneficiary states for the project in the country, which sought to address the issue of high-level malnutrition in Gombe State, with one out of every two children stunted and one in four children severely stunted.
He said exclusive breastfeeding in the state was at 20%, but that when widely accepted and adopted, could drastically reduce malnutrition issues.
Mr Rane appealed for the full support of all stakeholders, especially the traditional rulers to enlighten the people on the importance of exclusive breastfeeding, complementary feeding, the first 1000 days of a child’s life, antenatal care, emphasising that the first two years of a child was critical for brain development.
“Because the brain development for a child when he is born little and the first two years of birth, the brain develops maximally. So, when we focus on the first two years of age, I think we have won the battle,” said Mr. Rene.
He said the project would be based on evidence and monitoring, with the cooperation of the community, so as to give it a direction and ensure its sustainability.
The Chairman of Kwami Local Government Area, Alhaji Ibrahim Buba, pledged to support the project implementation through the provision of a conducive working environment and the sensitisation of traditional rulers in the LGA so that the project would gain wide acceptance.
“That is why we invited two of the traditional rulers thereafter, we will call them and discuss when, where and how the programme will start. If we decide that it is tomorrow, we are going to invite the whole traditional rulers together with the senior District head so that we will together continue to sensitise and enlighten our people. Through this sensitisation, and enlightenment, I know, with this traditional rulers and other stakeholders, we are going to have a successful programme and all our people are going to it through sensitisation,” said Buba.
A Nutrition Specialist, Mrs. Philomena Ireine from the UNICEF Bauchi Field Office who gave an overview of the PARSNIP Project, said it would be through a life-circle approach, where nobody will be excepted from its implementation.
Mrs. Ireine said the project would reposition prevention to be at the centre, using available foods in the state to provide food for the poor and vulnerable.
She said the project would provide various packages, such as strengthening of systems through partnership, relying on cash transfer to strengthen the economic capacity of the mothers to be able to acquire the needed food, use of the educational system, where the students would be taught the right way of feeding, as well as teaching the mothers on early detection of wasting.
“This programme is really hinged on the prevention of malnutrition. We don’t want them to get to the point of begging for Ready-To-Use Therapeutic Food, RUTF. So, i’s heavily on prevention. There will Micronutrient Powder Supplementation, home gardening, massive infant and young child feeding. It’s a scalable intervention. We are going to cover worldwide and LGAwide. Because it’s a centre of learning. We are going to take a baseline to find out where we are. So that at the end of five years, we will do a baseline survey to see how much we have contributed to the reduction of stunting and underweight in Kwami LGA,” Mrs Ireine said.
She said the project would operate a one-on-one Matching Fund, where an equal amount contributed by the government would also be contributed by UNICEF for the provision of RUTF through the donor funding of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Various speakers all pledged their support for the success of the programme, including the Gombe State Ministry of Science and Technology, which is already running the Complementary Feeding Programme, through the production and free distribution of the Children Complementary Food.
Mallam Ali Mohammed Gombe, who Represented the Commissioner of Science Technology and Innovation, Dr Aishatu Umar Maigari, said the programme had already started yielding positively in tackling malnutrition across the state, targeting moderate malnourished children from two years to five years.
PIAK
