Wellness & Fitness

Kenya lags behind on its child nutrition targets

baby

The State plans to reduce chronic malnutrition among children to about 14 per cent by 2017. PHOTO | FILE

Kenya is unlikely to meet its target of lowering stunted growth among children below the age of five by next year, new data shows.

In its National Nutrition Action Plan (NNAP), the Health ministry had anticipated to reduce chronic malnutrition among children to about 14 per cent by 2017 from 26 cent in 2014.

But according to United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef’s) 2015 Global Nutrition Report, the country has only realised an annual malnutrition reduction rate of about 0.6 -2.5 per cent since 2014--- which translates to about a combined 5 per cent so far against an overall target of 14 per cent by next year.

The Kenya Data Health Survey (KDHS) defines stunting as the result of failure to receive adequate nutrition over an extended period and may also be affected by recurrent or chronic illness.

There are 1.8 million stunted children below five years old in Kenya, according to a Unicef study.

The NNAP targets to tackle stunting by among other things encouraging women to exclusively breastfeed their children during their first six months, timely introduction of foods and micronutrients supplementation and food fortification.

Kenya has so far performed fairly as campaigns on exclusive breastfeeding has seen more women delay introduction of solid food.

More finances

The study showed that the number of women exclusively breastfeeding their infants has doubled over recent years and now stand at 61 per cent. Vitamin A supplementation for children and iron-folate during pregnancy has also increased, but still, a lot remains undone.

Lucy Murage, an infant and child nutrition senior programme officer at global firm, Micronutrient says that nutrition is a complex issue requiring a number of interventions.

“To reduce the level of stunting there is need to look into a number of factors like nutrition specific intervention, encourage women to exclusively breastfeed for the first six months, and allocate more finances towards campaigns, change of policy.

It also calls for various sectors like agriculture and health to work together,” she said.

However, Kenya is also the only country that is on course towards dealing with malnutrition. The global nutrition report says the only country is on course for all five World Health Assembly (WHA) undernutrition targets. Kenya is ahead of more than 100 countries that include Colombia, Ghana, Vietnam, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

During the 69th WHA last week Kenya was recognised for being on track with the maternal and child nutrition targets.

The WHA targets to reduce the number of stunted children under the age of five by 50 per cent, lower the rate of anemia in women of reproductive age by half, achieve a 30 per cent reduction in the infants born with low birth weight, double the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months, reduce and maintain childhood wasting (acute malnutrition) to less than five per cent by 2025.

Health Cabinet Secretary Cleopa Mailu said during the assembly that the 2012-2017 nutrition ambitious plan has helped the country get closer to achieving its target.

“Increased nutrition services coverage and quality of high impact nutrition interventions, enhanced monitoring and evaluation as well as high level advocacy and capacity building have also gone a long way in ensuring that we meet our targets,” he said.

Levels of stunting

Kilifi, Mandera and Bomet have the highest levels of stunting while Nyeri, Garissa and Kiambu counties have the lowest proportion, with each recording less than 16 per cent, according to KDHS.

The KDHS study says that children whose mothers have gone through higher education are less likely to be stunted compared to those that did not go to school or did not go past primary education.

Children from an urban setting and affluent households were also unlikely to suffer stunting.

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