UN Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), has pledged to support the fight against food and acute malnutrition crisis in seven Sahel states in northern Nigeria.
Mrs Edele Thebaud, the Chief of ‘D’ Office of the UNICEF in Bauchi, made this known on Tuesday at a one-day advocacy meeting organised by UNICEF for stakeholders from those states.
The states are Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano and Yobe.
She said that the states have high malnutrition crisis.
“UNICEF in 2009 initiated the Community Based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) programme to implement the fight against malnutrition in those states respectively,” she said.
She added that the programme began with three pilots local government areas in Gombe state before it was expanded to 42 other local governments in the seven states over the years.
“From inception, almost 200 000 malnourished children were admitted at the progrmme with over 60 per cent treated while others were still undergoing treatment,” Thebaud said.
In addition, Thebaud revealed that apart from the technical support provided by UNICEF to the programme, it also supported the CMAM in the seven states with 15 million sachets of Ready to Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF).
Thebaud said that the cost of the foods valued at over 6.3 million dollars (about N1.01 billion), made possible with support from European Commission Humanitarian Department (ECHO) and the Department for International Development (DFID).
She noted that UNICEF would continue to provide the RUTF to the states and local governments until they could sustain it with their own funds.
