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
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