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These children starve to death, and their plight seldom makes headline news. They die because their immune systems are weakened through lack of essential nutrients, and so they easily succumb to common childhood diseases that they would otherwise be able to fight.
Beyond these daily tragedies, there are millions of children who fail to reach their potential because they have been deprived of essential nutrients for healthy growth and brain development. Children from communities that are iodine deficient can lose an average of 13.5 IQ points, and iron deficiency makes them tired and slow, according to the report.
Undernourished children often miss and do less well at school, and are less productive in later life because short and weak adults cannot work as hard, making it very difficult for poor households to escape from poverty.
The threats of under nutrition to the economic growth of Tanzania are considerable. Recent analysis determined that vitamin and mineral deficiencies alone cost 650/-bn in lost revenue each year, equivalent to 2.65 percent of GDP. Most of these losses are within the agriculture sector (almost 400/- bn), where physical stature and strength are critical to productivity.
Tanzania has made striking progress in many health indicators over the past decade, but not nutritional status.
However, like many other developing countries, Tanzania is undergoing rapid social and economic and political changes, which intensify the difficulties that families face in providing appropriate feeding and care for their children.
Expanding urbanisation and globalisation has result in an increased number of families that depend on informal or uncertain employment and incomes with few or no maternity benefits, while increased access to the media can facilitate very fast transmission of knowledge and practices which affect infant and young child feeding.
Recently, the government launched the National Guidelines on Infant and young child feeding.
Speaking during the guidelines’ launch which took place in Dar es Salaam recently, on behalf of Permanent Secretary Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Charles Pallangyo, the Ministry’s Director of Human Resource Development, Dr. Otilia Gowele, said that the launched guidelines will guide institutions such as health facilities, professional associations, government and non governmental organisations, private sectors engaged directly or indirectly in maternal and child health facilities and communities.
“ The overall goal of this guideline is to improve the nutritional status, growth and development, health and survival of infants and young children through optimal feeding practices,’’ she says.
According to her, inadequate knowledge, unfavorable social attitudes and poor feeding practices contribute to the problem of malnutrition among children under five years of age and consequently violate these children’s rights as well as threatening their socio-economic development.
“In the country 97 percent of children are breastfed, although exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months is not adequate…that is 50 per cent while only 23 per cent of infants are on exclusive breastfeeding between the ages of four to five months,’’ she adds.
Basing on National Demographic Health Survey (TDHS 2010), overall, 11 per cent of Tanzanian women are considered thin for their height.
Recent scientific evidence reveals that one in five child deaths could be prevented through universal coverage of breastfeeding and complementary feeding.
However, the early introduction of complementary foods before the recommended six months is widespread in Tanzania. At the age of less than two months 11 per cent of infants are fed complementary foods and this rises to 33 per cent at 2-3 months and 64 per cent at 4-5 months.
The data also show that about seven per cent of infants do not receive complementary foods at six to eight months of age. About five per cent of infants are fed from bottles with nipples.
“Further, the amount of food fed per feed is indequate, the frequences are low, the diversity of the diet is poor and there is low utilization of food in the body due to infections and infestations from contaminated foods,’’
“Only 34 per cent of children aged 6-23 months are given adequate meals each day, and only 56 per cent are given a diet that has adequate diversity.
Overall, only 21 per cent of children aged 6-23 months receive a ‘minimum acceptable diet’ defined as containing breast milk, milk or milk products, adequate number of meals per day and adequate diversity,’’ says the survey
According to the survey, inadequate hygiene practices, poor sanitation and poor access to safe or clean water further exacerbate the quality of complementary foods.
In efforts to promote, protect and support breast feeding, the government has also gazetted the National Regulation for Marketing of foods and designated products for infants and young children.
According to Dr. Gowele the regulations apply to all markets and marketing practices related to safety, quality, availability and information of all foods and desinated products for infants and young children, whether imported or locally manufactured.
“Therefore bussiness networks in nutritional food should abide to the existing national laws and regulations which protect infant and young child nutrition,’’ she said.
According to the National Food and Nutritional Centre (TFNC), Coordinator for feeding of children, Neema Joshua, malnutrition is the cause of at least sixty percent of deaths of children aged below five years, whereas other diseases fatal to children cause only forty percent of deaths.
To her, the country’s nutrition status of infants and young children is not impressive.
“According to Tanzania Demographic Health Survey 2010, 42 percent of children under five years of age are stunted, 16 percent are underweight and five percent are wasted…59 percent areanaemic and 38 percent have vitamin A deficiency,’’ she said.
She further said that mortality in children under five years of age can be reduced by 15 percent through implementation of nutrition specific interventions to ensure optimal infant and young child feeding, such as breast feeding promotion and complementary feeding, micrionutrient supplementation and fortification.
“Most consequences of under-nutrition in the early stages of life from conception up to two years are irrevessable and they persist to adulthood,’’ she adds.
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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