Flowerbud News
The Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN) has provided essential nutrition services to 1.2 million pregnant and lactating women, adolescent girls and children under five years in Kano State.
The institute’s Senior Communications Manager, Ms Uzoma Nwofor, disclosed this in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday.
She stated that the services were delivered as part of the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN) project.
Nwofor noted that the project, which ran from 2021 to 2024, was implemented in collaboration with the World Bank and Global Financing Facility.
She said that it targeted nine local government areas in Kano State, namely Nasarawa, Kano Municipal, Fagge, Gwale, Tarauni, Kumbotso, Dala, Bunkure and Wudil.
She said “Dr Temitope Kolade, the Chief of Party for the IHVN ANRiN project, highlighted the initiative’s successes, noting that it achieved 100 per cent coverage of all 96 wards across the nine areas councils.
“The ANRiN project significantly increased access to and utilisation of quality, cost-effective nutrition services.
“These services include nutrition counselling for mothers, distribution of iron and folic acid supplements, intermittent preventive treatment for pregnant women, micronutrient powder, Vitamin A supplementation, deworming tablets and zinc supplements and Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) for diarrhoea management in children.
“The project enrolled 1,235,898 individuals, including 725,582 children under five years, 202,205 lactating mothers, 177,812 pregnant women.
“In addition to nutrition services, the project focused on educating mothers and caregivers on the importance of exclusive breastfeeding, complementary feeding and other key maternal and infant feeding practices.”
The communications manager stated that the project’s success was made possible through the active support of the Kano State Government, traditional rulers, household heads, community-based organisations and local volunteers.
“Community engagement activities such as townhall meetings, house-to-house visits, radio programmes and men’s forums, were instrumental to increasing community participation and support for nutrition interventions,” she added.
She pointed out that an innovative strategy was also introduced to improve the supply chain for nutrition products in two local government areas.
“This initiative enhanced the safety, availability and accountability of nutrition commodities by instituting strong leadership and operational systems,” she said.
NAN reports that the ANRiN project, supported by the World Bank and Global Financing Facility, aims to improve access to essential nutrition services for pregnant and lactating women, adolescent girls and children under five years across 12 states in Nigeria.
The project, which started in May 2021, focuses on maternal and child nutrition through breastfeeding education, micronutrient supplements, iron-folic acid tablets for pregnant women, malaria prevention, diarrhoea treatment with zinc/ORS, vitamin A supplementation and deworming.
IHVN was selected as one of the non-state actors to implement the project in Kano State, where it focused on nine local government areas.
Kano is among the states with the highest burden of malnutrition.
The 2018 National Nutrition and Health Survey (NNHS) reported a 6.8 per cent prevalence of Global Acute Malnutrition and a 26.9 per cent prevalence of underweight children in the state.
NAN
