AKINWALE ABOLUWADE
Oyo State government has lauded SOLINA Health Limited, a health-focused not-for-profit organization, for undertaking a three-year scheme to fight malnutrition in children and fortify pregnant women and nursing mothers against illnesses and diseases.
The project, undertaken by SOLINA, in collaboration with the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN), the Oyo State Government and the World Bank, touched no fewer than 4.2 million women and children across 16 local government council areas in the state from June 2021 till date.
The Commissioner for Health in Oyo State, Dr Oluwaserimi Ajetunmobi, in her address during the Solina Health end-of-ANRiN Project Oyo State stakeholders dissemination and close-out meeting, held at Kakanfo Inn and Conference Centre in Ibadan, expressed joy over the success of the programme.
Ajetunmobi said, “When you talk of acute malnutrition in the state, we can see that this project has really made an impact. I had been to the field, I had seen some children being fed with micronutrient supplements and I can say that they are doing well. I have seen other children that are not well fed at least in comparison, I can say they are not really thriving well. We had to link them up to hospitals for them to have proper care.
“You know, the project has closed now. I have my own reservation in terms of sustainability. Some of the things we are using were imported. We are looking for a way to have our things being locally made because that will make it effective and serve our people better. So, for this, we need collaboration. We need food supplements, locally made materials that we can use for our children so that the gains can be sustained and we can further improve on it. We need to set realistic target as well. Above all, we need to take ownership locally.”
Project Manager for ANRiN and Principal, Solina Centre for International Development and Research (SCIDaR), Demilade Osoteku, stated in an interview with journalists on the occasion that the three-year-project was clearly mapped out, well tracked and currently being comprehensively evaluated.
Dr Omowumi Okedare, Deputy Project Director, Solina Health Limited, said a lot was achieved in the last three years in the fight against malnutrition. We have been able to achieve a lot through our LGA stakeholders – the Nutrition Focal Persons, Health Educators, and MoH/PHC Coordinators and nutrition focal persons, the health educators, the state and more importantly, the project coordinating unit of ANRiN.
“At Solina Health, we provided pregnant women with Multiple Micronutrient Supplement (MMS) instead of the usual iron folic acid. For children, we provided four commodities – the Micronutrient Powder, Zinc ORS, Vitamin A supplementation and Albendazole tablets for deworming.
“We implemented the project in16 local government areas between June 2021 till date. Over the period, we have done over 4 million first services and 1.6 million repeat services. ANRiN focused on delivering seven basic packages of nutrition services in the women and the children categories. At SOLINA, we used micronutrient supplementation for the mothers. For the children, we used four categories: the micronutrient powder for the children from six months to two years, the zinc ORS, the Vitamin A supplementation and the deworming treatment.”
Dr Khadijat Alarape, Oyo State Project Coordinator for ANRiN, explained that the state was selected for the project due to malnutrition prevalence in the state evidence in stunting.
Alarape stated, “The evidence was high in Oyo State for children under age 5. Globally, the criteria for stunting is put at 24 percent, meaning that when you have 100 children, about 23 of them are stunted. That was the baseline used for the selection. And by global standard for stunting, it should be less than 20per cent.”
In attendance at the event were Dr Akintunde Ayinde, Permanent Secretary of the Oyo State Ministry of Health; Dr Anifat Ibraham, Permanent Secretary, Oyo State Hospital Management Board; Dr Akintunde Babatunde, Oyo State Director of Public Health; Dr Sunday Ojelabi, Permanent Secretary of the Oyo State Ministry of Budget and Planning; Dr Johnson Osoko, Director of Disease Control; and Dr Abbas Gbolahan, Director of Research, Planning, and Statistics, in the state Ministry of Health.
Health stakeholders across the 16 participating LGAs, who described the scheme as highly beneficial, urged the Oyo State Government to ensure that the improvements so far made is sustained.
