The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has said that approximately one million Nigerian children die annually before their fifth birthday due to malnutrition and various illnesses.
The Mandate Secretary, Health Services and Environment Secretariat, Dr Adedolapo Fasawe, made this known on Friday at a news conference to kick-start the 2024 FCT Maternal Newborn and Child Health Week vaccination.
The vaccination exercise, which is free for children aged 0 to 59 months, is scheduled to begin on July 20 and end on July 24.
Represented by Dr Babagana Adam, the Permanent Secretary, FCTA, Ms Fasawe said that the death rate among children between ages 0 to 59 months compelled the FCTA to continually carry out the vaccination exercise annually.
Fasawe revealed that malnutrition prevalence among these set of children in the FCT also made it necessary to carry out the exercise to make Nigeria’s children free from all forms of diseases.
To buttress the level of the malnutrition, she said, “The rate of stunting is 21.2 per cent, underweight 12.1 per cent, and wasting 3.0 per cent. Wasting reflects Global Acute Malnutrition which is still unacceptably high to meet up the World Health Organisation global target of lower than 5% for GAM by 2025 (NDHS 2018). “
She said that the exercise was a special week set aside by the Federal Government of Nigeria twice every year (May/June and November/December) to deliver key interventions at the grass-roots.
She added that the week focused on awareness and service delivery on maternal, newborn and child health care.
In her words, “There will also be growth monitoring and promotion exercise, food demonstration and nutrition screening of children from 6 – 59months, birth registration, family planning services and hand washing demonstration.
“There will also be focus on antenatal care and administration of IPTp to prevent malaria in pregnant women, HIV counselling and testing of HCT which has now been fully integrated into the MNCHW.’’
She further emphasized the need for stakeholders, including journalists to promote the exercise, calling on households across the FCT’s six area councils to cooperate with medical officers that would be going round to carry out the exercise.
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