Gov't Urged To Send Professionals To Village And Teach Parents How To Prepare Nutritive Food For Children.

Uganda is among the countries in East Africa with high levels of undernutrition whereby about 29 percent or 3 in 10 children below 5 years of age are stunted while about 3.5% of all children below 5 years of age in Uganda are faced with body wasting.

Undernutrition is a health condition caused by a lack of enough food intake, not having enough of the right combination of food nutrients, or the body’s failure to utilize the food eaten resulting in either, stunting, being underweight, or wasting. Globally, undernutrition affects more than 149 million under-five children, while in Uganda about 3 in every 10 children suffer from undernutrition. 

 Undernutrition and its risk factors among under-five children in Uganda were unevenly distributed across the country and a study that focused on spatial distribution was prudent to examine the nature of the problem and salient factors associated with it.

It is due to this reason that Members of Parliament seating on Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security, urged residents in Kamwenge district to intensify efforts of fighting malnutrition, after a survey placed Kamwenge as the district with the second highest number of malnutrition cases in Uganda. 

The lawmakers made the appeal while addressing residents at Biguri Town Council during the assessment of the burden of malnutrition in Kamwenge district, ahead of the commemoration of the International Day for Nutrition, that will be held in Kamwenge district on 28th May 2024.

"If residents harvest paw paws, all they think about is selling them. If they get eggs, instead of preparing it for the children to eat, they sell them in the market and buy pancakes for the kids. They have the food, but they don't know how to prepare this food to benefit the kids. The parents don't know that they can prepare lunch, supper breakfast and change the foods like posho, matooke, all they do is cook food once for the week, they prepare matooke or cassava that they feed on the whole week," explained Stanley Mwesige, Village Health Team (VHT) in Buguri Town Council.

He attributed the high malnutrition rates on poverty noting, "Many of the parents struggle to raise income and they ask us, if I give the kids eggs, where will I get money to buy salt? That is why some of them prefer selling the eggs. We would like Government and Parliament to send to Kamwenge professional people to teach people on how to prepare food for the children to come to the villages and teach our people on how to prepare nutritive food for the children."