Nigeria faces stunted generation, is number 2 for malnourished kids

By Antony Sguazzin | Bloomberg Opinion

NIgerIa faces the risk of a generation of stunted adults as climate change and conflict have resulted in the country having the second-largest number of malnourished children globally after India.

Of the 36 million Nigerians under five years of age, 15 million are stunted, 2.8 million are severely wasted and 30 million are anemic, according to figures provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund, or Unicef. Saving these children would cost about $120 each, mostly in the form of therapeutic food, according to the agency.

“The numbers are frightening,” said Nemat Hajeebhoy, head of nutrition for Unicef in Nigeria. “Essentially after the age of five or so, it’s irreversible.” Without intervention “a child who is stunted will be a stunted adult,” she said.

Much of Nigeria, which has a population of more than 200 million, was hit last year by devastating floods, which damaged crops at a time when the country was still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, the northern half of the country is wracked by violence from both jihadist groups and bandits. The insecurity and natural disasters hamper organizations such as Unicef from dispensing aid, cripple food production and interrupt immunization campaigns.

“When you look at the impacts of conflict on the population, it’s going to affect all forms of malnutrition,” Hajeebhoy said. “It compromises a child’s long-term growth and development” and more immediately, hungry children can be hit by wasting, she said.

By the end of December, 17 million people were without adequate food and that number is expected to rise to 25.3 million between June and August, the so-called lean season, continued from A12

Health Security.

China imposed a tracking system that forced millions of people to routinely get laboratory-run PCR tests to do things like go to the office, eat in a restaurant or ride the subway.

Simply being in the proximity of someone who later tested positive could lead to home confinement or being taken to a quarantine camp.

In Shanghai, 25 million people were locked down for two months in 2022. In other cities, workers fled manufacturing plants that used closed-loop systems that kept them inside the factories. Residents scaled fences and shoppers rushed exits when rumors of infections cropped up, for fear of being forced into weeks of isolation. Protests, once unheard of, erupted.

In the face of such discontent, China abruptly dropped its stringent elimination measures in December. Infection rates soared, with the government estimating 37 million people a day were getting infected at one point.

China wasn’t alone in grappling with the costs of elimination. Thousands of Australians caught outside the country when Covid flared were denied re-entry for more than 18 months, while Melbourne endured six lockdowns over 262 days in a bid to keep the virus out. New Zealand’s “Go Hard, Go Early” approach was also criticized when tough lockdown steps led to rising unemployment and domestic violence. Both countries have since seen a change in leadership.

Public revolt

Ev EN governments that decided against elimination, opting instead to flatten the curve, struggled to persuade people to follow basic control methods. In the US and many parts according to Unicef. That compares with just over 4 million in December 2019.

Of the 36 million Nigerians under five years of age, 15 million are stunted, 2.8 million are severely wasted and 30 million are anemic, according to figures provided by the United Nations Children’s Fund, or Unicef. Saving these children would cost about $120 each, mostly in the form of therapeutic food, according to the agency.

The most difficult states to access because of violence are Borno and Yobe in the northeast and Zamfara in the northwest. But stunting, wasting and inadequate nutrition are problems across the country, including in the commercial capital, Lagos.

Wasted children, characterized by thin limbs and bloated bellies, are in danger of dying. Stunting can also affect cognitive development.

The warning about the expected increase in numbers of hungry people “has come early enough for us to act,”

Hajeebhoy said. “There’s food assistance, there’s cash assistance, there’s also preparedness for ensuring that if the numbers increase, we have the best capacity to treat mothers and children from a nutrition lens with lifesaving nutrition services.” of Europe, topics like mask-wearing and immunizations for high-risk people became political quagmires, despite studies showing they slowed infections and saved lives.

That, of course, costs money.

There are “two big things,” she said. “It’s the planning and ensuring the resources, financial and human, are available to respond.” With assistance from Rene Vollgraaff /Bloomberg.

It was particularly difficult to persuade people to accept things like online schooling and social isolation without knowing how long the pandemic would last. Especially in the early stages, health officials were unsure which mitigation measures would prove successful or how long it would take to develop pharmaceutical interventions.

“We were hoping we could switch this thing off,” with immunity from vaccination or previous infection preventing transmission of the virus, said Jodie Mcvernon, director of epidemiology at the University of Melbourne’s Doherty Institute. “Those hopes were relatively short lived. We moved on from the idea that we can immunize the world and turn the infection off.”

The nature of Covid, with its mutations and hyper-infectivity, made elimination particularly challenging.

“When you are dealing with Omicron, there is no threading the needle,” Mcvernon said. “Once Omicron was out of the bottle, there was no squeezing the genie back in.”

A unified global response is now even less likely in the next pandemic. The number of emerging infectious diseases continues to grow due to global warming and development in rural areas that are home to wild animals, which act as hosts for many viruses.

Countries that were able to initially follow an elimination strategy are likely to pursue it again, while those that couldn’t are unlikely to be swayed by the example set during Covid, said Chen Xi, an associate professor specializing in aging and public health at Yale University in Connecticut. With assistance from Jinshan Hong / Bloomberg.