Fighting Malnutrition with Enrich

Emeka Ibemere

Relief may have come the way of the highly malnourished children and adults alike, including pregnant women and nursing mothers, as an organization proffers solution to the killer disease known as malnutrition in Nigeria.

To this end, Bio-Organics Nutrient Systems Limited, which provides nutrients solutions for other numerous companies that produces various food and beverages in Nigeria, has demonstrated its ability to tackle malnutrition head-on-collusion with their new tested micronutrients food product.

Bio- Organics has developed Enrich; a health fortification product to fortify food with vital nutrients in order to help children, pregnant women and nursing mothers, to meet up with the daily nutritional requirements; thereby preventing malnutrition, infant and maternal mortality rate in Nigeria.

The alarming effect of malnutrition has become major concern to governments, local and International health organisations and other stakeholders worldwide. Malnutrition, a condition more prevalent in developing countries, occurs when there is deficiency of certain vital nutrients in a person’s diet.

It also results from taking diets in which some nutrients are in excess or in wrong proportions. Lack of nutrients needed by the human body often leads to serious health problems and in some cases death. It could affect anyone, but infants, pregnant women and nursing mothers are the most vulnerable.

According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), “Malnutrition is the underlying cause of morbidity and mortality of a large proportion of children under five in Nigeria”.

Reports say it accounts for more than 50 per cent of deaths of children in this age bracket. UNICEF reports also noted that, ‘a woman’s chance of dying from pregnancy and childbirth in Nigeria is 1 in 13’.

In view of the World Health Organisation (WHO); micronutrients deficiency is “ubiquitous in many developing countries, the true toll of iron deficiency and anaemia lies hidden in the statistics of overall death rates, maternal haemorrhage, reduced school performance and lowered productivity.

 WHO estimated that about two billion people all over the world today are deficient in key vitamins and minerals, particularly Vitamin A, iodine, iron and zinc. And about 140-250 million children under five years of age are affected by Vitamin A deficiency globally.

Report by the Federal Ministry of Health said at least 41 percent of Nigerian children under age five suffer stunted growth as a result of malnutrition. Recent statistics by the ministry indicate that the North-West has the highest incidence of stunting with over 53 percent cases and 20 percent incidence of wasting. This is followed by the North-East, with 49 percent stunting and 22 percent wasting.

The North- Central has 44 percent stunting and 9 percent wasting among the entire population. The South-East region has the lowest incidence of stunting with 22 percent, while the South-South has the lowest cases of wasting, with 7.5 percent of the population.”

Through the various programmes by Federal and state governments in Nigeria, in conjunction with national and international health organisations, efforts have been made to curb the problem of malnutrition in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

 It appears, however, that governments and health organisations alone cannot fight the scourge; emergency action, intervention programmes and partnership with a research and development based industry might also go a long way.

For example, to checkmate the worrisome level of malnutrition in the state, Benue State Government recently made it known that it has concluded plans to freely distribute Enrich to millions of women and children in the state in order to reduce infants and maternal mortality. The state has established partnership with Bio-Organics Limited, maker of Enrich, in order to achieve this goal.

During a meeting last week Friday 16 August 2013, between the Benue State Government and management of Bio-Organics Limited, the Commissioner of Health, Benue State Hon. Orduen Abunku, explained that the partnership became necessary because the state government realised that malnutrition is a problem for Benue State and Nigeria in general, adding that: “malnutrition causes the death of many children that would otherwise survive malaria, diarrhoea or pneumonia, just because they are malnourished. So by preventing malnutrition, we are preventing the deaths of children and pregnant women in particular.”

The state is the first to have taken the initiative to distribute Enrich to the vulnerable people in the state as a means of combating the challenges of malnutrition.

The home fortification product Enrich has been developed in order to ensure that meals eaten by a child, pregnant woman or nursing mother is enriched with the necessary vitamins and minerals needed by the body.

WHO recommends that at least six months exclusive breastfeeding of infants from birth and after this period, when non-breast milk food is given to some infants, they may become vulnerable to micronutrients deficiency when their high nutritional needs are not met by the staple food they are given, because most do not contain adequate level of nutrients.  It was gathered that Enrich can be added to the food in order to fortify it with sufficient micronutrients.

Enrich contains vitamins A, D3, E, B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, and C, Folic acid, copper, iodine, iron, selenium and zinc. Zinc is a trace element that is useful for cellular growth and development, while iodine is important for hormone formation. Women who are pregnant or preparing for it are usually recommended to take food rich in iodine.

Enrich is a single serve free-flowing food powder, which comes in bright orange colour sachets. It enhances good health, cognitive function in children, and helps build defence system of the body against diseases. It supplements low nutrients contents of most food. It also helps reduce the risk of anaemia and iron deficiency.

A small pack of Enrich contains 60 sachets each, while a carton has 50 small packs. A sachet weighs 1 gram. Enrich is a tasteless powder that can be sprinkled and mixed with any type of food. The food must have been cooked and at a suitable temperature to eat before the micronutrients powder is added. Children from 6 months can take only one sachet of Enrich with their meal once a day. Food sprinkled with Enrich should be consumed within 30 minutes. It does not change the taste or colour of the food. And it is not a medicine.

The product is approved by the National Agency for Foods, Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Federal Ministry of Health, Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and also given recognition by international bodies such as Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), United Nations International Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) among others.

The instant micronutrients food product is available at hospitals, primary healthcare centres, pharmacies and supermarkets. Wholly indigenous, Bio-Organics Nutrient Systems Limited provides nutrients solutions for other numerous companies that produce various food and beverages in Nigeria. It also supplies other countries in Africa. It will be recalled that UNICEF estimated that 1.1million children are threatened with severe malnutrition. According to the report, when the death figures from malaria infection and other childhood killer diseases are added to that of malnutrition, it is easy to see why infant mortality in Nigeria is among the highest in the world. The United States Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook puts the 2012 infant mortality figures at 79.44 and 68.97 for male and female babies per 1,000 live births respectively.  But malnutrition, which manifests in some children as kwashiorkor, and affects the cognitive ability of children to learn in school, can be tackled successfully, even in developing countries such as Nigeria with a high children population.

But with the high cost of expensive animal protein, being out of reach of so many families in Nigeria, the breakthrough in nutritional supplements developed by Bio-Organics is a welcome development. Bio-Organics says Enrich is a weapon in tackling the defect. According to the organisation, Enrich was developed to help parents, governments and stakeholders in the health sector to explore this available cheaper micronutrients food product in solving the problem with dispatch. With Enrich and sustained awareness campaign, parents should be made to be conscious of other sources of protein like beans and soya milk, which could provide good nutrition intake for children. It is expected that the government should also try and intensified her campaign on natural breastfeeding by nursing mothers in giving their infants’ breast milk in the early period of their lives.

Since malnutrition become a huge challenge in Nigeria, experts have also called for child-spacing formulary as a means of fighting the dreaded scourge adding that it keeps their families to a proportionate size. “It is easier for parents to cope with feeding a small-sized family than an unwieldy one”, a report says. A health scholar who resides in Ikeja, Chikwude Aloma, said the cases of malnutrition are not only experienced by children alone. He disclosed that a chunk of Nigerian adults also go through cases of poor and imbalanced diet.

It is expected that with Enrich and the World Health Organisation’s recommendations of exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life and supplementary breastfeeding for additional 24 months, malnutrition may be on its way out of Nigeria.