Eighty percent of children under-two severely malnourished

Cape Coast, May 23, GNA - About 80 percent of children under-two years in the Central Region are severely malnourished, a situation that is affecting their growth as well as intellectual development.

Mr. Samuel Sosi, the Central Regional Nutritionists who said this at a workshop on "Nutrition and Malaria Control for Child Survival Project" (NMCCSP) in Cape Coast on Friday, added that malnutrition accounted for 54% of deaths among children under five years. He said this "worrying trend" was as a result of insufficient household food security, inadequate maternal and child care as well as childhood diseases including diarrhoea, malaria and measles.


It is in this regard that the Ghana Health Service in collaboration with World Bank was carrying out the NMCCSP in five Regions of the country which are worse affected by malaria and malnutrition to help address the situation. The beneficiary regions are Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Central and Volta with Central having about 3,500 communities benefitting. The workshop was organized by the Central Region Health Administration for district health directors, chief executives, coordinating directors as well as other stakeholders in the health sector.


Mr. Sosi said malnutrition was a developmental issue which required the collective efforts of all stakeholders to evolve measures to bring it to the barest minimum because when it becomes chronic, its effects could be deadly among its victims who mostly include pregnant women and children with acute anaemia as a result.

He mentioned some of the effects to include underweight which could cause stunted growth of children, saying 34% of children in the Region are chronically malnourished and have stunted growth. According to him, the 2008 Ghana Demographic Health Survey (GDHS), nutrition was a problem in Ghana and that people should know that overweight was also a malnutrition problem which must be checked to prevent non communicable diseases.


He mentioned particularly the increasing number of overweight cases among women and children and said Central Region was second to Eastern Region. Mrs. Hannah Adjei, National Programme Manager of the NMCCSP, said 40% of children in the country did not grow well with most of them having stunted growth and wasting, thereby affecting their performance at school and making them non productive.


She said the Project therefore sought to put interventions in place to encourage mothers to ensure giving local and less expensive foods with all the nutrients to their children. The Regional Minister, Mrs. Ama Benyiwa Doe, said the government had put in place a lot of interventions to help control malaria and urged the DCEs to collaborate with the health directorates in their areas to ensure good sanitary conditions at all times. On nutrition she regretted that lack of basic knowledge on balanced diet with local cuisines by majority of women in the rural areas in particular, had rendered a lot of children malnourished.