In its effort to reduce the prevalence of maternal and infant malnutrition and stunting, the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency has said it completed arrangements to domesticate the National Policy For Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition as well as National Guidelines For the Prevention and Control of Micronutrients Deficiencies in the state.
The Director of Disease Control and Immunisation of the agency, Dahiru Ibrahim Mahmoud disclosed this to reporters during a capacity-building workshop for health stakeholders in Bauchi organised by Alive and Thrive with funding from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in partnership with USAID IHP.
He said if domesticated, the policies can go a long way at improving the state of nutrition among mothers and young children in the state.
“The situation of nutrition in Bauchi is not encouraging as it is in other states of the federation. However, we have development partners doing well to address some of the challenges.
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“Nutrition support groups were established in all the 20 local government areas of the state to mobilise communities in terms of ensuring that indices around wasting and what have you have been addressed.
“As you can see, we trying to come up with documents around MIYCN policies, guidelines and what have you to improve nutrition in the state,” he said.
Mahmoud said the policy documents will also help in creating awareness of MIYCN best practices in the state.
The Director said cultural beliefs and inaccurate perceptions by mothers on nutrition-related behaviours will be addressed by the policy documents if domesticated to support the survival, growth and development of newborns, infants and children in the state.
