University of Malawi nutritionist Victoria Ndolo says at least 25.5 percent of children in Malawi live in severe food poverty where they cannot access more than two groups of food.
On the other hand, 57 percent of the children face moderate food poverty.
Ndolo said this in Lilongwe yesterday during the national launch of the First Foods Africa Initiative organised by National Planning Commission (NPC) in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and Ministry of Health. The initiative seeks to reduce malnutrition among children using locally produced and processed high nutrient foods.
She explained that severe food poverty means that the children cannot access more than two food groups while those in moderate food poverty cannot access more than four food groups a day.
“What the project aims at is to create a mindset change where parents understand and are able to process the locally available foods into nutritious meals for their families especially children,” said Ndolo.
She said children can be introduced to solid or semi-solid food to complement breast milk when they reach four to six months for a proper early childhood development.
Deputy Minister of Health Noah Chimpeni, who was the guest of honour, said for the initiative to bear fruits, there is need for strong capacity building, especially for parents in communities.
He said apart from empowering caregivers in health facilities, the project will also focus on communities and local manufacturers to ensure that they manufacture high quality and nutritious foods.
Said Chimpeni: “We need to isolate bad myths from good ones regarding food. Some myths prevent certain categories of people from eating certain foods, yet those foods are highly nutritious.”
NPC acting director general Joseph Nagoli has said Malawi needs to transform its food systems and ensure that children access nutritious food in their first 1 000 days.
Unicef country representative Johannes Wedenig said the organisation will support production and consumption of nutritious food and ensure that communities adopt production of local nutritious crops.
The launch was held under the theme ‘Localising food solutions for addressing child food poverty in Malawi’.
The initiative is being championed by Unicef and is being implemented in 13 countries in Africa focusing on social marketing and behaviour change on nutrition matters.
