Sierra Leone is marketing breastfeeding as a essential policy for decreasing stunting and malnutrition. Photograph: Chaloner Woods/Getty Photos
Explaining why nutrition has been considerably maligned, head of growth, equity and livelihoods at Save the Kids, David McNair stated: “Nutrition has been the Cinderella problem of growth. It truly is been a hidden problem because it isn’t going to display up on death certificates.”
In 2013 healthcare journal, the Lancet, confirmed that malnutrition is the underlying result in behind 45% of youngster deaths beneath 5. The figure is even larger in Sierra Leone in which 57% of deaths of kids below five are attributable to malnutrition. A Unicef’s 2010 survey also discovered that 44% of children in this small west African nation had been stunted – a symptom of lack of satisfactory nutrients.
But the government is displaying it has the political will to deal with the issue, having signed up to the Nutrition for Development agreement and joined the Scaling Up Nutrition (Sun) motion, a collective effort from governments, civil society, the UN, donors, firms and researchers. It really is involvement in Sun is being led by the vice-president’s workplace.
“It is come to the point where everyone knows it’s not just health associated, you require to have all the players on board to tackle malnutrition,” says Aminata Shamit Koroma, director of food and nutrition at Sierra Leone’s the ministry of well being.
As the nation moves from submit-conflict (the civil war ended in 2002) to emerging marketplace (GDP growth was 15% in 2012), the government realises that it should shift from therapy of malnutrition to prevention. Agriculture, schooling, gender equality and sanitation all have a position to perform in this.
“We have witnessed that ladies with a larger educational degree are significantly less very likely to have malnourished young children. You want excellent sanitation. You require food to be inexpensive, available for folks to be able to buy and feed themselves,” says Koroma, who was in London for the launch of the Generation Nutrition campaign in which thirty NGOs are pledging to end kid malnutrition with this generation.
In Sierra Leone, Koroma focuses on marketing breastfeeding as a essential policy for reducing stunting and malnutrition amongst younger generations. The message that babies must be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of their lives is broadcast above the radio, for the duration of awareness weeks and by way of mom-to-mother assistance groups.
“Experienced mothers counsel younger mothers,” she says. “We’ve identified that the barrier to exclusive breastfeeding is tradition. Grandmothers inform mothers they need to give the baby water since it really is thirsty. We use this identical medium [grandmothers] to go back to the mothers and say, you will not have to give the infant water. Breast milk has everything the little one wants for the initial 6 months.” The mother-to-mom initiative began with three assistance groups of 20 mothers every and has grown to 3,000 help groups across the nation.
As effectively as grandmothers, the Sierra Leone Nationwide Foods and Nutrition Protection Policy 2012-2016, targets fathers. “We have discovered that when they get to know about the benefits of breastfeeding they help their wives,” says Koroma. “A single myth is that if you are sexually active in the course of breastfeeding the youngster will get ill. So we inform them that this is not correct, in truth it will help you, due to the fact for the 1st six months if you actively solely breastfeed it assists to end acquiring pregnant.”
One more motivating element for fathers is that if their infants are breastfed they never have to get foods for them for their initial six months of daily life. “When they find out, some fathers will truly push their partners to breastfeed simply because this is cash in their pocket,” says Koroma.
The nutrition policy also recommends the establishment of a code of conduct for the advertising and marketing of breast milk substitutes. The code has however to be drafted but Koroma says it is on the agenda for this year. A report from Save the Youngsters launched last year located that businesses that generate breast milk substitutes are nonetheless placing children at danger by promoting their product as superior to a mother’s milk.
“A lot of men and women truly feel that this is an situation that was dealt with in the 1980s and 1990s,” says McNair. “But we stay concerned by the position of large companies in making an attempt to influence and weaken legislation around ensuring code compliance at a country level.”
Despite the fact that Koroma is realistic that Sierra Leone will not meet the millenium development aim of eradicating hunger by 2015, she is optimistic that the nation can accomplish this by 2020. “We’ve noticed now that nutrition is on the growth agenda of the government,” she says. “When the president of Sierra Leone talks about what he hopes to do, now he mentions nutrition.”
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Nutrition: in Sierra Leone breast is greatest
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