The Oyo State Government has been rated after achieving 58.7% in the practice of exclusive breastfeeding by Women of Child Bearing Age, the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN) revealed on Thursday.
The Project Coordinator, ANRiN Oyo Project Implementation Unit, Dr Khadijah Alarape, stated this during a stakeholders meeting of State Committee on Food and Nutrition organised by ANRiN Project which was held at Owu Crown Hotel, Ibadan.
The ANRiN PC, who was elated with the recent data from MICS 2022 Survey, said that the increase shows pregnant and lactating women are now aware of the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding for the general well-being of their children.
She appreciated the state Governor, Engineer Seyi Makinde for his support at increasing the maternity leave for pregnant women from 3 months to six months and also ANRIN for implementing 7 basic package of nutritional services across the 33 LGA’s in the state.
This, according to her, has really helped the status of exclusive breastfeeding in the state in the last two years.
‘The state governor should be thanked for his help at granting 6-months maternity leave for our mothers. This has really helped. This can be confirmed from available statistics on Nutrition indices that the State is doing well as far as Exclusive Breastfeeding is concerned. Although we need to work more on the rate of stunting in the state.”
While calling for more collaboration of the SCFN members, Dr. Alarape said that it is imperative for every line ministries on nutrition to have a budgetary allocation for nutrition activities in their various MDA’s.
She reiterated ANRiN’s effort at providing cost effective nutritional services to pregnant and lactating women, adolescent-girls as well as children under 5 across the state.
She also said that two non-state actors, Solina Health Ltd and Save the Children are currently working in communities across the state, giving pregnant and lactating mothers as well as children under five basic package of nutritional services.
In his welcome address, Director of Development Partners at the Ministry of Budget and Planning, Mr. Moruf Oyetunji, said that the meeting is a statutory meeting which is held quarterly to review nutritional intervention and address malnutrition in the state.
