World Vision commits $3.5m to child hunger, malnutrition alleviation
World Vision Ghana (WVG), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has committed $3.5 million into a project to alleviate child hunger and malnutrition in Ghana.
The “ENOUGH Campaign” project will focus on ensuring that children within ages zero to 18 have access to quality and abundant nutritious food by the end of three years of its implementation in 2027.
It will be officially launched on July 17 this year, with the implementation scheduled to commence in October this year. In an encounter with the press at the pre-campaign launch in Accra last Monday, the National Director of WVG, Laura Christina Delvalle, said the ENOUGH Campaign was expected to contribute to building a “world where every child enjoys enough nourishing food so that they can thrive” as stipulated in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, dubbed End Child Hunger and Malnutrition.
The initiative, she said, was expected to provide quality education, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, child protection and participation, household food security and humanitarian emergency interventions to 3.5 million most vulnerable children in the most underserved communities in Ghana.
Ms Delvalle said the challenges of food insecurity were beyond availability, access, utilisation and stability, but also included poverty, climate change, rapid urbanisation, growth, gender inequalities, food loss and poor infrastructure, hence the need for comprehensive measures to address those challenges.
Statistics on food insecurity
The Child Protection and Advocacy Manager of WVG, Gregory Dery, lamented the heightening food insecurity in Ghana as captured in the 2023 World Bank Report and the 2022 Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES) by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) which informed the programme.
According to the WB Report, Ghana’s food insecure population surged from 560,000 in 2021 to 823,000 in 2022, while the AHIES 2022 indicated that 15.1 million (representing 49.1 per cent) and 13 million (representing 42.1 per cent) Ghanaians experienced food insecurity in first and second quarters respectively.
For child hunger and malnutrition, Mr Dery said although progress had been made in reducing malnutrition in Ghana nationally, high rates of poverty and stunting persisted in the Northern Savannah Ecological Zones at 50.4 per cent and 33 per cent respectively based on the 2023 World Bank Report.
According to the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS) 2022, the national stunting rate stands at 18 per cent, while the current rate of food wasting stands at six per cent, underweight at 12 per cent and two per cent of children under five years being overweight.
Policy reform and strategy
Mr Dery said although the government of Ghana had demonstrated commitment to nutrition through its comprehensive Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition (RMNCAHN) strategic plan, among others, there was also the need to revise some of those policies.
He explained that nutrition policies must “focus on vulnerable groups and reduce structural factors that created health and nutritional inequalities”. “Efforts are also required to make all sectoral plans and poverty reduction strategies nutritional sensitive backed by political commitment resources and legislation in successful implementation,” he added.
Mr Dery said the programme would undertake advocacy and strategic partnership, and influence policymakers to prioritise child nutrition-sensitive approaches within national policies and funding mechanisms related to sustainable agriculture, food security, disaster and risk reduction.
He urged the media to help to propagate the message of child hunger and malnutrition to influence reform that would address the heightened food insecurity in the country, especially among children.