Central records high rate of acute malnutrition

Cape Coast, Sept. 20, GNA - Four hundred and twenty seven (427) severe malnutrition cases among children were recorded, from January to June, this year, by the Central Region Health Administration, with Agona West having the highest of 113 followed by Upper Denkyira East with 83 cases.

The Regional Nutrition Officer, Mr. Samuel Sosi, who disclosed this at a media briefing, at the weekend, expressed regret that eighty two percent of the cases were children from zero to two years. Fifty four per cent are females.

Mr. Sosi said forty one percent of the children have, however, been fully rehabilitated and discharged while forty four per cent were still being treated. Three per cent, however, died during treatment with the remaining defaulting.

He pointed out that the damage caused to such children was irreversible because the period of rapid brain development occurs in the first three to four years and queried the kind of adults the region would produce should the trend continue. Mr. Sosi said UNICEF was supporting the regional directorate to address the issue to help forestall any negative social implication and has, therefore, provided some therapeutic food (plumpy nuts) for the rehabilitation of malnourished children in the 17 districts of the region.

This has resulted in significant improvement in the children under treatment.

He said the therapeutic food contains a mixture of nuts, powdered milk and other rich minerals and vitamins that generate rapid results within two to six weeks.

Mr. Sosi called on parents to endeavour to give nutritious local diets to their children after rehabilitation because the problem could recur if they failed to do so and cited instances where fully recovered malnourished children had relapsed after rehabilitation. Mr. Sosi said his outfit identified three different types of kwashiorkor among the children and stressed that improper infant feeding was one of the major causes of malnutrition. He appealed to the media to feed the public with nutritional messages to complement the efforts of the GHS towards behavioural change so that parents would feed their babies with local dishes with all the necessary nutrients.

Mrs Ernestina Agyapong, a nutritionist specialist with the UNICEF, appealed to mothers to exclusively breastfeed their babies in their first six months to safeguard them against diseases and to facilitate their total growth. 20 Sept. 09