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In its drive against malnutrition, the United nations children fund (UNICEF), has donated therapeutic diets to lactating and expectant mothers (pregnant women) in Bayelsa State.
It would be recalled that Unicef has recently drawn the attention of the state government to issues concerning exclusive breastfeeding and child nutrition in the state.
Making the donations at the primary health centre, Sagbama town, headquarters of the Sagbama council area of the state, the head, Unicef Port Harcourt field office, Dr Anselem Audu, leading staff members of the UN agency, stated that the essence of the donations was to ameliorate the impact of the shortage of adequate nutrition for children in the area.
The Unicef team was accompanied to the ancient town of Sagbama by officials from the state Ministry of health.
This was even as Unicef has said data from its research and others from its partners show that Sagbama Local Government Area was amongst the worst hit by the 2022 ravaging floods which destroyed farm lands and other sources for staple foods, leading to high spate of malnourished children in the area.
National Wire Correspondent reports that Unicef had during the week ended a two-day media dialogue on child nutrition in the state where it recommited to partnering the State Government in combating malnutrition.
Speaking against the background of same issues on malnutrition in other parts of the state, in pursuant of data Unicef made available to Newsmen in the cause of the media dialogue, Dr Audu noted that the UN children fund intent to replicate same feat in other flood impacted Local Government Areas across the state, saying the donations of the therapeutic diets was not the agency’s first intervention upon the devastating 2022 floods in the state.
National Wire learnt that therapeutic diets are usually a modification of regular diets, and that in administering therapeutic diets modifications are done in nutrients, texture as well as food allergies and food intolerance.
Unicef said: “Therapeutic diets are meals planned to enable and control the intake of certain foods and nutrients. Therapeutic diets are used as part of the treatment of certain medical conditions, especially in children. These diets are prescribed by physicians and were planned by nutrition specialists.”
