USAID moves to save malnourished kids

TO combat the problem of malnutrition among Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is to prepare food supplement for more than 70,000 children in this category.

This was disclosed in Abuja at the end of project forum organised by the USAID/MARKETS Livelihood malnutrition project.

Managing Director, MARKETS, Tim Prewitt, said “food insecurity is quite often a social challenge where vulnerable populations, primarily women, lack the resources, skill, confidence to make decisions about household assets in order to improve their household nutrition”.

According to him, “more than one billion people, nearly one-sixth of the world’s population, suffer from chronic hunger, while malnutrition takes the lives of more than 3.5 million children each year”.

He pointed out that it is in response to this challenge that the organisation seeks to, through the activities that would incorporate good practices in nutrition and homestead farming with enterprise development, ensure that “vulnerable households are empowered to be self-sufficient in combating poverty and malnutrition”.

The programme Manager, Mr. Bassey Archibong, said malnutrition in Nigeria was a growing problem strongly linked to social and economic issues. “Nigeria has more malnourished children than Ethiopia and Kano State alone has more chronically-malnourished children than Niger.