Deal with rising cases of malnutrition

One of the ironic things about malnutrition is that in many situations, children suffer from it, not because there is a lack of food, but because their parents have failed to provide a balanced diet.

If a family grows Irish potatoes for sale, they will feed their family on the food crop day and night because it is easier and seemingly less costly.

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The better and healthier thing however, would be for the parent to use a fraction of the proceeds to buy a crop with different food value, such as beans or groundnuts, that can be had at least a few times a week.

Another option would be for the parent to plant some of these other crops including greens for home consumption.

Malnutrition, according to the World Health Organisation, refers to deficiencies, excesses, or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients. The Unicef website states that more than one third of all young children in the country – 2.4 million – are stunted. It also estimates that between 2013 and 2015, about 250,000 deaths of children were associated with under nutrition (a component of malnutrition), which is responsible for four in 10 deaths of children under five.

Malnutrition is a disease that can be prevented or treated well if caught early enough, with food, which Uganda tends to be blessed with in abundance most of the year. The solutions to reducing the figures of the deaths should focus on tooling the populace with knowledge, seeds or seedlings of various crops and support to grow these crops regularly.

A long-term approach that looks at providing these elements will in the end be cheaper than treating the disease when it has gone too far.

As Mr David Peera, the Kabuna Sub-county chairman, stated in yesterday’s Daily Monitor in the story titled, “Alarm over high child malnutrition”, that there should be “intensive sensitisation by the health educators to guide our people to keep children healthy. This was after the local leaders in Budaka District expressed concern over the increasing rates of acute malnutrition among children.
Uganda keeps grappling with the disease, which is ironic considering the fertile land in most areas of the country.

However, a deeper look at the problem reveals that poor feeding knowledge, little breastfeeding and lack of food, among other things, are the causes of malnutrition.

If the authorities work with the local leaders and organisations with a good track record of delivering results, to provide information and regular support to families, it is likely to go a long way in solving the problem.