The Federal Government of Nigeria plans to train 38,180 frontline health workers on nutrition to enhance optimal Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN), communication and services to Nigerians.
Mrs Ladidi Bako-Aiyegbusi, the director and head of the nutrition division, Federal Ministry of Health, disclosed this in keffi at the eight-day capacity building exercise of frontline workers and stakeholders on nutrition.
She said the ministry would organise two sections of national level master trainers on maternal, infant and young child nutrition, to educate participants about good nutrition-related behaviour to improve nutrition outcomes for children.
According to her, “The training is in addition to the master trainers that have been trained in 2023, adding that the exercise was designed to help the trainers to understand and learn how to implement and promote different feeding practices among mothers and families across different communities.”
Bako-Aiyegbusi said the participants should be able to describe the nutrition trends and list common nutritional problems in the country at the end of the training.
She said MIYCN would also help to maximise the impacts on child growth and micronutrient status by focusing on maternal nutrition, delivery practices, and improved infant and young child feeding.
“Thereafter they will go to the 36 states and FCT to facilitate step down training.
“There are going to be three levels of step down training.
“The first level is the state level master trainers, we will be training 2,138 state level master trainer.
“Then this level masters trainers will now go and train frontline health workers that is the service providers in the secondary and primary facilities,” she said.
Nutrition is in the front burners because people are bother about the poor indices of nutrition in the country, and identified poor knowledge as the cause of poor nutrition in the country.
“We have realised that the key thing that is leading to the poor indices of nutrition is poor knowledge of individual households in the communities on healthy feeding practices.
“The training is targeted towards increasing the skill and knowledge of health workers and volunteers on information to educate people on what they should do in order to have good nutrition practice,” she said.
Bako-Aiyegbusi also quoted the Minister of Health, Prof. Muhammad Pate, as saying that the ministry was strongly supported by the Federal Government to retrain 120,000 frontline health workers, and double the number of functional primary health centers from 8,800 to over 17,000 in the next three years.
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