IMPORTANT: Five-year Nutrition Intervention Progr Hits Kaduna

A five-year intervention program called Accelerating Nutrition Result in Nigeria (ANRiN) has been launched in Kaduna to support efforts to address malnutrition among children, women and adolescents in the state.

Programme Coordinator of ANRiN, Dr Zainab Muhammad-Idris made this known in Kaduna on Wednesday. She added that, the project would cover all the 23 local government areas of the State.

ANRiN was a five-year World Bank-funded project secured by Kaduna State Government, for preventive activities against malnutrition.

The project, she said, was designed to protect children from the devastating and life-long effects of stunting malnutrition through the scale-up of cost-effective interventions.

“It is designed to strengthen the role of the state to plan, finance, implement and monitor large-scale nutrition programmes, through effective coordination of all nutrition activities in the state,’’ she said.

She further explained that, the project was structured to increase access to quality and cost-effective health and nutrition services to vulnerable groups like pregnant and lactating women, adolescent girls and children under five.

To her, “it will promote preventive activities through improving nutritional practice in the state. This will ensure that the targeted group, including other community members, has the right nutrients that will reduce chronic malnutrition.

“It will also reduce maternal and child mortality rates in the state.

“This, in the long run, will improve the nutrition indices in the state, increase school completion rate and performance, as well as improve the productivity of the state’s labour force.’’