Campaign launched to reduce chronic malnutrition among Mozambican children

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Campaign launched to reduce chronic malnutrition among Mozambican children

8:02 CAT | 06 Sep 2016

Notícias (File photo)

The Mozambican government on Monday launched a nutrition campaign, intended to last for two year, and aimed at reducing the rate of chronic malnutrition among children.

The target is to reduce the number of children under five years of age suffering from chronic malnutrition from the current figure of 43 per cent to no more than 35 per cent, the target figure mentioned in the government’s Five Year Programme for the 2015-2019 period.

Speaking at the launch of the campaign in Maputo, Health Minister Nazira Abdula said it is intended to guide and inform households about the importance of breastfeeding infants, and transmit knowledge about the components of a healthy and nutritious diet for older children.

Abdula promised that educational activities will be undertaken intended to drive social and behavioural change. Channels to be used in the campaign will include talks given in communities and places where there are large concentrations of people, radio programmes and messages sent by cell phone.

A specific nutritional theme will be introduced each month. This month the theme is the diet required for small children, This will stress the need, after six months of exclusive breastfeeding, to introduce other, and varied foodstuffs, providing the child with an “adequate complementary diet”, said the Minister.

“With this initiative, we hope to strengthen the interventions under way and speed up the reduction in the nutritional problems that affect our population”, added Abdula. Among the existing interventions mentioned by Abdula is the National School Feeding Programme.

The government’s cooperation partners, represented by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) recognised the importance of the campaign as the start of effective communication leading to social and behavioural changes towards health and nutrition among communities and households.

The UNICEF representative in Mozambique, Marcoluigi Corsi, stressed that these changes require a range of actions and efforts coming from multiple sectors and stakeholders.

The cooperation partners, he said, “reaffirm their undertaking to support the Mozambican government in reducing chronic malnutrition, through integrated programmes of health, nutrition, water supply and sanitation, benefiting the key interventions for child survival”.

Source: AIM