The Ministry of Health has put in place measures to eliminate malnutrition in all its forms within five years.
The ministry has acknowledged that despite the country having made significant progress in reducing malnutrition in the past two decades, there exists wide regional variation in the distribution burden.
For instance, some counties have a very high prevalence of stunting of over 30 per cent while others have as low as nine per cent.
The nutrition situation in the country has been worsened by the prolonged drought and now the floods, which have adversely affected household food security and the nutrition status of many Kenyan homes.
In 2021, the government launched a groundbreaking programme known as Nutrition Improvements through Cash and Health Education (NICHE).
NICHE provides cash and nutrition support to vulnerable families in Kilifi, Kitui, West Pokot, Marsabit and Turkana counties to enable them to provide better care for their children.
Health CS Susan Wafula on Thursday said three of the counties with the highest stunting levels are among the five counties implementing the NICHE programme.
“The same NICHE counties are the ones affected with the highest levels of wasting with Marsabit Samburu and West Pokot appearing among the top ten counties with the highest wasting levels,” the CS said.
“We are worried about this because undernutrition increases the risk of illnesses, as well as lessening the ability of the children to grow to their full potential,” she added.
The ministry now plans to put up structures to ensure the long-term sustainability of the programme by ensuring its components are captured in the long-term plans.
According to the ministry, high-impact nutrition interventions, if implemented at scale can only prevent 20 per cent of stunting, whereas the remaining 80 per cent can only be addressed by multi-sectorial interventions.
Data shows the proportion of children under the age of five who are stunted reduced from 35 per cent in 2003 to 18 per cent in 2022.
Wafula has further noted that nutrition interventions are the best strategic intervention for governments and other organisations to fight against poverty.
She however noted that the implementation requires a multi-sectoral approach.
“Whether the primary focus of these programs is agriculture, health, or education, nutrition is the common thread because it’s an issue that cuts across every sector,” she noted.
Under the NICHE programme, the ministry has supported the scale-up of nutrition counselling by rolling out the baby-friendly community initiative, which is a capacity-building program for health workers, Community Health Promoters as well as community structures that facilitates the delivery of nutrition counselling and promotion of nutrition services.
To date, the ministry has supported the training of at least 724 health workers on the baby-friendly community initiative in the five counties.
The ministry has also fully trained an additional 6,014 CHPs on nutrition content and nutrition counselling, services that they have been offering to both NICHE and non-NICHE beneficiaries in their communities.
On Wednesday, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell warned that it will take time and commitment by the international community for communities affected by drought and floods to recover.
Rusell who visited drought-affected Garissa and Dadaab refugee camps said as families are driven to the brink, children are going hungry, missing school, forced into child labour or early marriage and becoming sick, including from cholera outbreaks.
