Nursing mothers embrace child-feeding interventions
A number of nursing mothers in most communities in the Volta Region have embraced the exclusive breastfeeding concept and are also ready to observe good nutrition practices to control stunted growth in children and pregnant women.
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The development follows the introduction of locally engineered programmes supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to fight child malnutrition and stunted growth and boost nutrition in pregnant women.
Various activities
The North Dayi District Nutrition Officer, Mr David Tekpor, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that activities carried out included child welfare clinics, mentoring visits, administration of vitamin A supplements, using salt test kits to test salt in households and nutrition assessment counselling to TB and HIV/AIDS patients.
He said officials had covered all the 65 communities in the district and reached out to 37.5 per cent of the targeted 1,806 pregnant women, and 36 per cent of the 3,162 children projected.
Sharing of experiences
“I refused to practise exclusive breastfeeding and told my friends not to do so; to me it was wicked to feed a baby with only breast milk for six months but with the education from the counsellors, I now practise it myself,” a community health nurse said in Jordan, a community in North Dayi.
“My child is four years old, but he looks like somebody who is seven or more years and he is very intelligent and performs well in school,” Mrs Hilda Katso said.
Mary Tokuat Hodzo, 34, of Ho West said after having a pre-term baby, seven months after pregnancy, she lost hope about her baby's chances of survival until a community nurse counsellor intervened and introduced her to the mother-to-mother support.
“I delivered alone in my room when I was seven months pregnant. I thought my baby was dead, but it wasn’t. After that, people said my baby would not survive, so I went to see this nurse and she was often visiting me and advising me on how to feed my baby. My baby is now 11 months old and is very healthy,” she said.
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Malnutrition
Madam Lillian Selenje, a nutrition specialist with UNICEF Ghana, said the problem of malnutrition was a serious one for which a clear policy direction and a national action plan and strategy were needed to deal with.
“The Ghana government will have to develop a policy on nutrition, make it a priority and come up with an action plan to control stunting and anaemia.
“We still have a significant number of children who are still stunted; we are talking about over two million children who die, and these are preventable.
“There are also a significant number who are malnourished. About 10,000 children are severely malnourished but this number could be high, maybe about 40,000,” she said.