The executive director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, has called on State Governors to own the fight against acute malnutrition in the country.
Mallam Rafsanjani, who was represented by the CISLAC’s SAM project Coordinator/Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Ms Lovelyn Agbor-Gabriel during the one day Wider CSO groups engagement on the prevention and treatment of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) as a child right issue in Gombe state on Thursday.
Rafsanjani further said two million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition and only two out of every 10 children affected are currently reached with treatment.
Rafsanjani said the call has become necessary considering the fact that many international donor organizations have started withdrawing from funding many programmes in the country adding that before now, many State Governments do little or nothing to the fight thus leaving everything to the donor agencies.
Mr. Rafsanjani who stressed that malnutrition is still a very big issue in Nigeria considering that about 65 children die as a result of acute malnutrition every hour.
“Many state Governments don’t have matching funds, and donor organizations have started going, so, we have to make State Governments to own these programmes aimed at fighting malnutrition”, he stressed.
The Programme officer of CISLAC, Mohammed Murtala, said State Governments should be able to procure at least seventy (70) per cent of the Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) used in reviving acutely malnourished children which is now produced in Nigeria.
