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Tuesday 14 November 2017
Tuesday 7 November 2017
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... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology
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Friday 6 October 2017
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Monday 4 September 2017
Communique: 2017 Nutrition Symposium
Communique
The Media Centre Against Child Malnutrition (MeCAM) held its
maiden one-day Nutrition Symposium on Friday August 4, 2017, at the Welcome
Hotel, International Airport Road, Lagos, with the theme ‘Malnutrition, Child
Development and the Media’.
The event drew participants from the Academia, Media and the
Civil Society especially those specifically working on nutrition. The most
prominent of these CSOs are Scaling- Up Nutrition Business Network/Global
Alliance on Improved Nutrition (GAIN) which was represented by Ms Ibiso
Ivy King-Harry; Civil Society Scaling -Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN),
represented by Mr. Sunday Okoronkwo; and Community Health and Research
Initiative (CHRI) whose board chairman Dr Aminu Magashi Garba was in
attendance. The event was chaired by Professor Babatunde Oguntona, Honorary
Board of Trustee member of MeCAM and former president of the Nutrition Society
of Nigeria.
WHEREAS the symposium looked at the issues surrounding
malnutrition as well as various measures, past and present, being undertaken to
defeat what stakeholders agreed is a silent killer of the Nigerian dream;
WHEREAS experts insisted that official figures of children
ravaged by the killer disease may be grossly understated and that children not
properly fed within the first two years of life may end up being stunted or
wasted;
WHEREAS the symposium condemned the attitude of the Nigerian
leaders to this crisis and observed that foreigner partners appear more devoted
to resolving it;
WHEREAS stakeholders were united on the critical role of the
media in focusing attention on the crisis;
WHEREAS the forum dissected a whole lot of fallacies and fads
around nutrition and their impacts on the growth and development of the child;
The Nutrition Symposium resolved:
1. That Nigeria
must invest in the nutrition of its people and make access to proper nutrition
a fundamental right as a precondition for national growth and development, with
India and Brazil cited as examples of developing nations that invested in the
nutrition of their people and are now reaping the benefits in terms of huge
socio-economic and technological advancement.
2. That
conscious effort be made by all stakeholders, especially the media, to pull
down all fads and fallacies around breastfeeding and nutrition, including but
not limited to claims in some culture that giving newborn children the
colostrum makes them susceptible to witchcraft.
3. That there is
urgent need to declare an emergency to address the crisis of malnutrition, with
the Nigerian government urged to rededicate itself to the implementation of all
action plans on nutrition, such as the $912m required to fully implement the
National Strategic Plan of Action for Nutrition (NSPAN 2014-2019).
4. That the
media should avoid celebrating fraudulent individuals and their activities, but
rather promote stories that bother on human interests such as the need for a
reorientation and training of journalists on issues of malnutrition.
5. That there is
need for the media to understand the topic of nutrition, and interrogate
official data on it, with a view to give accurate information to the public in
language understood by the vast majority of their audience.
6. That
eliminating malnutrition is possible if all stakeholders do their bits and the
national policies on nutrition are fully implemented.
7. That
government should make access to gainful employment and adequate food a right
for every citizen as these would go a long way to resolve the malnutrition
crisis.
8. That
government should not just commit funds to address malnutrition but to also
take concrete steps to resolve the underlining cause of malnutrition in
Nigeria.
9. That MeCAM
and the media at large should raise the bar in reporting and creating awareness
about malnutrition, sustain the
discourse to boost advocacy efforts and champion serious commitment to
nutrition in Nigeria so that history may say well of our role as media
practitioners.
Signed:
Rafiu Ajakaye Remmy
Nweke
Chair, Rapporteur
Faculty National
Coordinator, MeCAM
Saturday 2 September 2017
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Friday 11 August 2017
Nutrition Symposium’17: FG urged to fund nutrition to save children
Lagos, Nigeria,
August 10, 2017: The Federal Government (FG) of Nigeria has been urged to
commit adequate funds to address the growing menace of malnutrition, with
experts and stakeholders saying the way to avert the danger is for the country
to not just fund projects targeted at treating the millions of children stunted
by malnutrition but commit to awareness campaigns to prevent the disease.
Speaking
at a one-day symposium on 'malnutrition, child development and the media'
organised by the Media Centre Against Child Malnutrition (MeCAM), Sunday
Okoronkwo, a project manager at the Civil Society on Scaling Up Nutrition
Nigeria (CS-SUNN), explained that the country currently does not have proper funding
to address the problem, warning also that figures such as 11m Nigerian children
being stunted may well be a poor representation of the reality.
Okoronkwo,
who stood in for CS-SUNN project director, Mrs Beatrice Eluaka, at the event also
attended by other top pro-nutrition civil society groups, including Community
Health and Research Initiative (CHRI), Scaling Up Nutrition Business Network
Nigeria and Global Alliance on Improved Nutrition (GAIN), lamented that the country's $912m action plan
on nutrition for the years 2014 through 2019 remains largely unfunded, with
Nigeria’s $100m counterpart funding of the policy hardly making it into the
annual budgets.
According
to him, the country's 2017 budget has no provision for the plan which expires
in 2019.
Speaking
on ‘Dealing with nutritional Fads and Fallacies’, Dr. Aminu Garba, chairman of
CHRI, called for declaration of emergency on malnutrition, called for sustained
media engagement, among other steps, to address the many fallacies around the
question of nutrition.
Garba
outlined these to include cultural claims that giving newborns colostrum
exposes them to witchcraft or that children and women should not eat meat or
take adequate milk.
Remmy
Nweke, the national coordinator of MeCAM Nigeria, said the organisation evolved
from the unique need for the media to respond to the national emergency on
malnutrition. He insisted that government’s funding to combat malnutrition is
not “commensurate” to the volume and potential consequences of the unfolding
crisis.
About MeCAM:
Media
Centre Against Child Malnutrition (MeCAM) Nigeria was founded Thursday,
August 28, 2015, as a media advocacy group against child malnutrition and
well-being, as well as to strengthen the agro-nutrition capacity and interest
of its members professionally in contribution to nation-building, especially in
Nigeria and across the continent of Africa among developing countries of the
world.
MeCAM
is committed to showcasing successful and development efforts in the area of
agro-nutrition for the benefit of mankind and for Africa emancipation from
extreme hunger especially in children, women and society, centred on Goal 2 of
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Further
inquiry:
Julie Ekong
Director,
Outreach, MeCAM Nigeria
+2348033266916,
Email: mecamnigeria@gmail.com
Tuesday 8 August 2017
Nutrition Symposium’17: Expert says 13% of Nigerians risk being mentally deformed
Press Release:
At least 13 per cent of Nigerian children risk growing up
with mental deformity unless proper iodine is part of their nutrition,
according to professor emeritus, Babatunde Oguntona, who calls on government to
pay greater attention to public health.
“If we don't keep iodine level properly, we'll have 13% of Nigerian
children mentally deformed,” Prof. Oguntona said at the weekend in Lagos at a
one-day Nutrition Symposium on ‘Malnutrition,
Child Development and the Media’ organised by the Media Centre Against
Child Malnutrition (MeCAM).
“Imagine 13 percent of parliamentarians mentally deformed.
Inadequate iodine in our food is a serious threat. You can't talk of
development when you ignore the issue of nutrition status of your people,” he
added, rapping the Nigerian authorities for their poor response to the threats
of malnutrition.
Oguntona, a former president of the Nutrition Society of
Nigeria, said between 13 and 18 Nigerians children die of malnutrition and
related diseases every hours and called on the media to step up advocacy on the
issue.
Ivy Ibiso KingHarry, an associate at the Scaling Up Nutrition
Business Network | Global Alliance on Improved Nutrition (GAIN), said the media
have a duty to promote messages on nutrition as influencers and change agents.
She added however that such media efforts must flow from proper understanding
of the science of nutrition and effective delivery of messages in language
understood by common people.
She urged reporters to always fact-check and scrutinize
official data on malnutrition, be consistent and build trust in their duty as
gatekeepers.
Wednesday 2 August 2017
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Tuesday 1 August 2017
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Sunday 30 July 2017
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Friday 28 July 2017
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Thursday 1 June 2017
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Monday 8 May 2017
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‘Solving Malnutrition Will Cost Nigeria N912m’
For Nigeria to see the end of child malnutrition in the shortest possible time and save lives of 2.5m children annually, government would have to source and provide the total sum of N912m in the next five years to tackle the menace.
This fact was revealed at the weekend in Enugu by the Head of Nutrition Department, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr Chris Osa Isokpunwu while taking some Media Editors through a two-day dialogue on “Leveraging Resources for Child Malnutrition in Nigeria” conveyed by United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), Nigeria.
Although Isokpunwu reiterated the need for government to comit itself to solving the problems of malnutrition in the country, he however lamented that for three years running, budget lines for Nutrition by government has be abysmal.
Saturday 4 March 2017
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Friday 10 February 2017
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