Malnutrition worries Health minister
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Monday March 11, 2024 06:00
He said underweight prevalence amongst children under the age of five stood at 3.8 percent in 2023, slightly above the national target of three percent. In addition, he said the Botswana Demographic Survey of 2023 revealed that 3.6 percent of children aged below five years and 33% of adults were overweight.
“To address these challenges, my ministry, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations is in the process of developing the first National Food and Nutrition Policy, which is expected to be completed during the 2024/25 financial year.
The policy is aimed at harmonising nutrition action plans, goals and targets across all the relevant sectors. The m ministry has also, in collaboration with SADC, developed the Botswana Food Fortification Strategy (2024-2028). Fortifying staple foods with essential micronutrients is an important part of a broad-based strategy to reduce malnutrition in all its forms," he said. Furthermore, the minister said the strategy will benefit local small, medium and large-scale food milling industries in advancing innovation in the fortification of foods such as wheat flour, maize meal, sorghum meal, and edible oils.
In addition to preventative approaches such as the Supplementary Feeding, he said the ministry capacitates health workers to manage children with acute malnutrition in all health facilities. He said 160 health workers were trained on identification and management of acute malnutrition, while 146 community health workers were trained on simplified approaches.
Additionally, the minister said procurement of ready-to-use therapeutic products for treatment of moderate and severe acute malnutrition in outpatient and inpatient in health facilities remains key to saving the lives of children. With the impending drought this year, he said his ministry is monitoring the nutritional situation and will respond accordingly. Meanwhile, in reducing child mortality and outline the ongoing efforts to strengthen child health, he said in 2023, 493 deaths of children under five years were recorded compared to 663 in 2022.
He added: "The causes of these deaths are pre-maturity, sepsis, malnutrition, diarrhoea, and pneumonia. Our comprehensive approach towards reducing the deaths encompasses capacity building for health workers, focusing on essential programmes such as Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI), Prevention of Mother-to Child Transmission (PMTCT), Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (EMONC), Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) and other High Impact Interventions.” He also revealed that in 2023, a nationwide polio campaign was successfully conducted and attained 81% coverage. The minister said the IMCI survey was conducted in health facilities in all the 27 districts where the main objective was to assess the quality of outpatient child health services and close identified gaps accordingly.
He, however, said the implementation of these strategies is pivotal as they work towards the Sustainable Development Goals for child survival, aiming to reduce under five mortality rates to 25 or fewer per 1, 000 live births by 2030. Dikoloti said a critical concern is the disproportionate neonatal deaths, constituting over 60% of deaths of children under five years. With that regard, he said to address this pressing need, neonatal case management and resuscitation training is done in all hospitals while pre-service IMCI training is done annually at institutes of health sciences and the University of Botswana, for final-year nursing students. Moreover, in the current financial year, his ministry managed to train two hospitals in neonatal conditions and resuscitation. He said the intention is to increase the training to five other district hospitals.
“Our commitment to equipping health workers with the necessary skills to manage childhood illnesses remains steadfast, with a particular focus on the IMCI and EPI programmes,” he said. Meanwhile, on issues of maternal death, he said the ministry continues to strive towards the reduction of maternal deaths in an effort to achieve the SDG target of 70 deaths per 100, 000 live births by 2030. “Capacity building, covering a wide range of service providers is on-going in the districts in order to establish community-based teams of health care workers and support staff. Engagement of Ntlo Ya Dikgosi has been one of the significant advocacy efforts to reach communities with preventive messages on adoption of contraception to avert unwanted and unplanned for pregnancies among adolescent girls and young women,” he told Parliament.
The minister said this is also expected to limit births among women who have had more than six pregnancies. He outlined that his ministry will be embarking on a Maternal Mortality Reduction Project in collaboration with the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) through PEPFAR support in the coming financial year 2024/25. While on alcohol and substance abuse, the minister said the use of psychoactive substances, mostly referred to as drugs, poses a serious challenge to the health and wellbeing of the society especially on mental health. He said an increase in drug consumption is being noted especially amongst young people. He said according to the Botswana Drug Use Epidemiology report, the most consumed substances are alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, cocaine and Methcathinone (CAT), which are illicit.
Furthermore, Dikiloti said his ministry continues to increase services to those requiring treatment (rehabilitation) through training of addiction professionals, increase in outpatient rehabilitation services for both government and stakeholders, and collaboration with international partners. In addition, he said Strategic Plan for Alcohol and Substance Use 2022-2027 is being implemented with the aim of reducing alcohol and drug use related harm. He said the strategy, which was formulated in collaboration with stakeholders, aims to reduce demand for drugs and suppress supply. He further pointed out that it aims to not only reduce consumption but also to prevent people from initiating consumption, or where they are consuming substances, prevent them from being addicted.