The Oyo State government has achieved 58.7 per cent in the practice of exclusive beastfeeding by women of childbearing age, the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria has disclosed.
The Project Coordinator, ANRiN Oyo Project Implementation Unit, Dr Khadijah Alarape, stated this during a stakeholders’ meeting of the State Committee on Food and Nutrition organised by ANRiN Project held at Owu Crown Hotel, Ibadan, Oyo State capital.
The ANRIN project coordinator who was elated with the recent data from Multiple Indicator Cluster 2022 Survey, said the increase shows that pregnant and lactating women were aware of the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding for the general well-being of their children.
She appreciated the state governor, Seyi Makinde, for his support to increasing the maternity leave for pregnant women from three months to six months, and also ANRiN for implementing seven basic package of nutritional services across the 33 local government areas of the state.
This, according to her, has really helped the status of exclusive breastfeeding in the state in the last two years.
“The state governor should be thanked for his help at granting six-month maternity leave for our mothers. This has really helped. This can be confirmed from available statistics on nutrition indices that the state is doing well as far as exclusive breastfeeding is concerned, although we need to work more on the rate of stunting in the state,” Dr Alarape said.
She reiterated ANRiN’s effort at providing cost effective nutritional services to pregnant and lactating women, adolescent girls as well as children under-5 across the state.
She also said two non-state actors, Solina Health Ltd and Save the Children are currently working in communities across the state, giving pregnant and lactating mothers as well as children Under-5 basic package of nutritional services.
In his welcome address, the Director of Development Partners at the Ministry of Budget and Planning, Mr Moruf Oyetunji, said the meeting was a statutory meeting held quarterly to review nutritional intervention and address malnutrition in the state.
