Kaduna state government has treated over 2 million children and women across the state of malnutrition since 2018 under the Accelerating Nutrition Result in Nigeria (ANRiN) project, the executive secretary, Dr. Zainab Idris Kwaru has said.
Speaking on Thursday in Kaduna after presenting the Award of the second Best Performing SPHCDA (State Primary Healthcare Development Agency) on nutrition to the Executive Secretary, Kaduna State Primary Health Care Board, Dr Kwaru said, “We have reached over 2million beneficiaries across the state. ANRiN project, a five-year programme, was created in 2018 but we did not start work until 2021 because of delays due to the 2019 elections and the Covid-19 pandemic. The ANRiN project has seven key areas of focus of tackling malnutrition across the state.
“Maternal, infant and young child nutrition including women, adolescent and girls; deworming where we provide albendazole to our non-state actors to ensure that children are not stunted; micronutrient powder is also added; Vitamin A supplement for improved eyesight; treatment of diarrhoea with zinc orange; provision of IQT for pregnant women and provision of iron folic acid for adolescent girls in addition. We also provide contraceptives where we do child spacing.”
Speaking on the award, she said, “it’s well deserved award. We should have been first but due to some logistics we came second. Kaduna state stood out in basic packaged nutrition services and adolescent services. The project is sponsored by the World Bank in 12 states in Nigeria and supported by the Federal Ministry of Health and Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and Planning. We were adjudged to be one of the best performing states out of 12 states.
“Our Primary Health Care Board is known to be in the forefront of providing quality care and quality services and we all know that primary healthcare is progressing. We want to ensure that our primary healthcare centers have been upgraded to provide quality services to the people. As far as indices are concerned, we will continue to improve to see very remarkable improvements in our indices in the next survey.”
The Executive Secretary Kaduna State Primary Health Care Board, Alhaji Hamza Abubakar in his reaction to the award, congratulated Governor Nasir el-Rufai and everyone who contributed to the success. “This award will help to validate your effort and energize you further, the endgame is when that child is nutrition-healthy. We have just done our duty and fulfil our responsibility to the people of Kaduna state especially our women and children. Winning the award of the second best performing state primary health care board in the country crowns your effort.
“To me, it’s a very happy moment. It shows we are the second, but our target is to improve on that position. We need to see how well we have done in preventing death from severe acute malnutrition among children, micronutrient distribution, preventing death from chronic malnutrition under the ANRiN project. We are happy for the award but our strategy is to provide more support to the ANRiN project to be more effective. We will study the score card to see where we are lacking and we will try to fill the gap.”
