By Ahmad Umar
Rise in malnutrition cases in Gombe State, Northeast of the country, especially among children and nursing mothers has been attributed to the decrease in counterpart funding of health programmes by the state government.
Participants at a workshop on Nutrition Budget Tracking for Civil Society Organizations (CSO’s) and Media made the assertion on Wednesday in Gombe.
The workshop was organized by Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC)
The stakeholders were of the opinion that the inability of Gombe State Government to back-up its budgeted funds for nutrition programmes with cash releases has been the reason why malnutrition cases had been on the increase in the state.
As at the month of October 2018, the participants noted, not a single dime had been released from the N150 million approved in the 2018 budget for Nutrition activities  in the state.
According to the participants, a visit to one of the Community Management on Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) sites in Gombe metropolis during the workshop showed that an average of 30 women come to the CMAM Centre with their malnourished children once in a week in recent times.
There are other programmes waiting for the release of counterpart funding by the State Government which had been long awaited such as the World Bank Accelerated Nutrition Result in Nigeria (ANRIN), they said
Other major reasons responsible for the rising cases of malnutrition in Gombe state, they said, was the lack of exclusive breastfeeding by mothers and the high level of ignorance among rural dwellers who sell most of their nutritious food items like beans, poultry products, groundnuts, vegetables, grains such as millet among others after the harvest for other needs instead of availing such food items for family use, especially on children.
Participants at the session including traditional rulers, senior civil servants from the State Ministries of Economic Planning and Health also spoke on the need for vigorous enlightenment and advocacy for more attention and funding of the critical sector.
Earlier ,the Programme Officer, Nutrition Advocacy of CISLAC, Mohammed Murtala called for the urgent need for the release of funds for the procurement of RUTF in the State as one of the interventions.
He also stressed the need for the scaling up of CNAM sites from the current four Local Government Areas of the State to all the eleven LGA’s.
Murtala also stressed the need for frequent meetings of the State Nutrition Committee and the Technical working group and the inclusion of the media as well as the creation of Nutrition Agency in the State.
