Hey Lovelies,
I had a busy week at work this week and I had some blog postings to put up but I seriously needed to focus because my career depended on the output and at some point I almost gave up trying but guess what…I conquered it and here I am smiling like jollof rice.
Anyway, I thought I could share some data on nutrition this weekend and hoping we all see these statistics as human lives and give ourselves reasons why our mothers and children should feed well and why we should encourage mothers to practice exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and give sufficient complementary feeding……..NOT NOODLES!
Let’s go….
· One million Nigerian children under five die every year (45% of them due to causes attributed to malnutrition).
· Even though the proportion of stunted children (to be short for their age) in Nigeria declined from 41% in 2008 to 37% in 2013, there is no significant improvement in their nutritional status since 2003.
· 37% of children under age 5 are stunted (short for their age), while 21% are severely stunted, 29% are underweight (low weight-for-age), and 12% are severely underweight and 18 % are wasted (too thin for their height and 9% are severely wasted.
· Only 17% of children less than age 6 months are exclusively breastfed.
· 98% percent of children were reported to have been breastfed at some time.
· Overall, only 10% of children 6-23 months are fed appropriately based on recommended infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices.
· Rural children are more likely to be stunted than urban children (43% compared with 26%).
· Stunting is lowest in the South East (16%). In other zones, stunting varies from 18% in South South to 55% in the North West.
· Among the states in Nigeria, stunting is highest among children in Kebbi (61%).
· Children in North-West and North East zones are more stunted 50% and 47% respectively compared to their counterparts in North Central (29%) South South (20%), South West (10%) and the South East (10%).
· Children of mothers with no education are more than three times as likely to be stunted (50%) as children of mothers who have completed more than secondary education (13%).
· The prevalence of malnutrition among women ranges from 2% in the South East to 10% in the North East.
· Malnutrition rates are particularly high for adolescents (15-19 years) as compared to women aged 20-49 years (16% versus 3%).
· 11% of women are undernourished and 25% overweight or obese.
Data were sourced from the (NDHS, 2013)
So my question is what are we doing that we are not doing right?
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