Posted on August, 30, 2018 at 09:50 am
REGIONAL and district officers have been challenged to work together in efforts to help reduce malnutrition that is increasingly becoming a serious problem in the country. The call was made yesterday by the Minister of State, President's Office, Regional Administration and Local Government, Selemani Jafo, saying that it is sad that despite being the regional food basket, Tanzania has high rate of malnutrition.
Tanzania has one of the world's highest rates of chronic malnutrition, estimated to affect over 50 per cent of children under five years age.
Malnutrition takes a major toll on human health in the country, chronic to ill health throughout their lives, even if they have better access to food as adults.
Over the last four years, Tanzania has seen a growing recognition that addressing under nutrition needs to be a political priority. One significant response has been a large-scale food fortification programme.
Speaking while officiating at the opening of a-two days meeting for regional commissioners and regional administration secretaries here, the minister said malnutrition remains a major problem in the country.
"Almost all regions in the country have serious malnutrition cases thus the need for the local government authorities to jointly work and come up with better ways to revert the trend," he said.
The minister called on RCs to work closely with DCs in providing public awareness to the people and ensure malnutrition become among their top agendas in public meetings.
He also expressed concern that some of the local government authorities are not doing enough as far as establishment of more industrial activities in their areas is concerned.
Speaking on behalf of the RCs, Mrisho Gambo said some of the regions, including Kilimanjaro have taken steps to help solve the problem of malnutrition.
He said the regional authority has set aside 95m/-, being 95 percent of the money earmarked for nutrition issues in the region in the 2018/19 budget.
Malnutrition is caused by a number of factors including inadequate dietary intake and diseases, household food security, inadequate care and feeding practices, unhealthy household environment and inadequate health services.
Dr Fatma Abdallah research officer at Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC) said recently that Tanzania like other sub-Saharan countries is experiencing double burden of malnutrition meaning that under-nutrition and over-nutrition problems.
According to her, the levels of stunting in children 0-59 months has been reduced from a prevalence of 50 percent in the 1990s to 34 percent in the 2015/16 Tanzania Demographic Health Survey (TDHS), but still above the average of 30 percent for Africa thus falling within the category of “high” in public health significance.
According to World Health Organisation (WHO) classifications used in measuring the prevalence of stunting levels and the TDHS 201/16, nine regions in Tanzania have a level of chronic malnutrition that exceeds 40 per cent. These regions are Iringa, Njombe, Kagera, Dodoma, Ruvuma, Rukwa, Kigoma, Katavi and Geita.
The three top regions with the highest malnutrition levels of nearly 50 per cent are Iringa (51.3pc), Njombe (51.5pc) and Kagera (51.9 pc).
WHO recommends countries to maintain a 5 per cent level of stunting and wasting (low-weight compared to the height of a child), but many countries in the African region still have wasting rates above the target.
In Tanzania, wasting in children between 0 and 59 months declined from 8 percent in 1992 to 4.5 percent in 2015/16 reaching the World Health Assembly (WHA) 2025 targets of below 5 per cent.
Source: IPP Media