Mozambique losing the fight against child malnutrition

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique losing the fight against child malnutrition

12:57 CAT | 09 May 2017

Reuters (File photo)

Mozambique has not made any progress since 2008 in the fight against chronic infant malnutrition, which affects about 43 per cent of Mozambican children under the age of five.

Chronic malnutrition in Mozambique was discussed at the weekend in Maputo during the visit to Mozambique by Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Coordinator of the Expanded Nutrition Movement Gerda Verburg. “There is still much work to be done in the fight against this evil” in Mozambique, she said.

According to the Technical Secretariat for Nutritional Security (SETSAN), more than two out of five children under the age of five living in Mozambique suffer from chronic malnutrition.

Social activist and former first lady of Mozambique, Graça Machel, says it is important to look at this problem as a task for the whole government, “starting with the central leadership of the executive, whether at the level of the president or at the level of the prime minister”.

Machel said that “leadership in the fight to overcome hunger and promote nutrition has to come from government because that is where the authority lies to tell the Ministry of Agriculture to produce food of the necessary diversity”.

The Ministry of Health Edna Possolo says the government will try to decentralize the implementation of the National Plan to Fight Chronic Malnutrition so that actions reach the most vulnerable populations.

Possolo says that some provinces have already benefited from decentralization through technical assistance in implementing the plan.

In Mozambique, about 45 percent of deaths among children under five years of age are associated with malnutrition, and more than 1.5 million children below the age of five still suffer from the scourge.

Niassa, Nampula, Cabo Delgado and Zambézia provinces are worst affected.

Source: Voa Portugues