The Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN), a World Bank-funded program to reduce malnutrition in children, pregnant and lactating women in Nigeria says it has provided Multiple Micro Supplementations to over 1.5 million pregnant women and Micron nutrient Powder to over 1.8 million children across 484 wards in 44 local government area of Kano state.
The ANRiN project coordinator in Kano Dr. Umar Yahuza disclosed this while briefing journalist on the activities of ANRiN in Kano and the ongoing training of healthcare personnel drowned from all part of the state held in Kano Monday.
He said the program is aimed at reducing malnutrition by increasing access to quality nutrition services, and to improve school performance and completion, reduce maternal and child mortality, and increase labor force productivity.
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According to Yahuza, the project has embarked on massive training of healthcare personnel with 498 already trained and the ongoing training of another set of 480 carefully selected from Primary Health Facilities in the 484 wards across the state.
“Initially when ANRiN project was designed, then Nigeria is battling with hunger and the statistics is not as pronounced as now a days, and in those days what Nigeria is battling is what we termed as “Hidden Hunger” which the country has food but don’t contains the nutritional values needed for the body, so the design of ANRiN 1.0 was to address the missing micro nutrient that are missing in the available food just like Iron, folic acid, Vitamins among others,” said Yahuza.
“With the recent global phenomenon such as Insecurity, economic downtown, war in Ukraine, natural disasters and other challenges affect the common man’s way of living, because a person that can afford normal food in those days cannot do it now. That is why the recent ANRiN 2.0 is integrating social support to women and Vulnerable group of the population as well as empowering people on the modern ways of farming technology and that is why ministry of agriculture and natural resources has been integrated to be part of the program,” he added.
“We have nearly trained half of Doctors, Nurses and Midwifes in Kano with modern ways on how to counsel pregnant women so that we will have changes in returned, because what we observed is that we have been doing a lots of project yet their is no improvement, so that is why we said let’s train every stakeholder in the treatment of pregnant women, lets trains every stakeholder in the treatment of children and Neonet so that we can overhaul the entire system and address the problem holistically, once and for all and by this in little times we can see and records developmental changes in tackling the problems,” the project coordinator further said.
“According to survey conducted in 2023 Nigerian malnutrition has increased to 40% which is 3% increase from the previous 37%. Though we thank god Kano state has recorded a success in the reduction of Malnutrition by 9% in the same year,” said Umar.
He then urged pregnant women to always report to various healthcare facilities to seek medical attention from professional so that their health and that of children or unborn babies will be in good conditions.
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In a remark, Nusaiba Labaran Datti and Usman Balarabe Usman from Kibiya local government appreciate the training describing it as timely and productive.
According to the dua, the training served as a refresher training to the medical profession, nothing that their attitude in the treatment of their relationship and treatment to their patients will surely change.
“We want appreciate our project coordinator for his commitment to our training and words of encouragement in ensuring every patients received adequate and necessary attention needed for the improvement in public health,” they added.