By Adeyinka Adeniran
The Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN) in conjunction with World Bank is set to train stakeholders on Implementation of Baby Friendly Initiative (BFI), to promote adequate breastfeeding among women across the state.
The Director of Nutrition and Project Coordinator, (ANRiN), Oyo State, Dr. Khadijat Alarape said the Baby Freindly Initiative (BFHI) is an effort to improve and build health workers’ capacity in the pace-setter state.
She said the capacity building initiative came to the forefront, due to the retirement of most of the health officers either mandatorily or voluntarily.
She urged stakeholders, especially health workers to orientate nursing mothers the danger that is attached to malnutrition during nursing babies. According to her, inadequate breastfeeding could caused malnutrition which should be totally eradicated in our society.
She reiterated the importance of first six month of exclusive breastfeeding as inadequate breastfeeding could contribute to stunting and impaired brain growth, thus having adverse effects with negative impact on the society.
Dr. Khadijat explained further that those facilities to be trained were picked from the three Senatorial Zones of the State.
She said that there is need to rebuild the capacity of state health workers because most of the health officers that were trained for the program have retired while some left health service voluntarily.
She added that the aim of the training is to meet up with the global standard of having baby friendly hospital initiative” adding that the Pace Setter state has the highest patronage of Antenatal Clinic among other states in the project.
In a related development, the Oyo State Government in collaboration with APIN Public Health Initiatives has trained health programme managers in the state and top management staff in the health sector on leadership and programme management.
The State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Oluwaseri Ajetunmobi while speaking at the workshop in Oyo town, said the state government was committed to the delivering of her mandate in the health sector to the people of the state.
The commissioner explained that the ministry would embark on a new course and ensure that health care delivery continually gets to all and sundry.
She revealed that Oyo State was recently awarded a certificate of recognition by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), after achieving the required coverage on HIV treatment towards epidemic, a feat that justified the huge investments of the government in the health sector.
According to the commissioner, “The leadership and management training offers us the opportunity to be equipped to achieve greater milestones towards achieving the UN target of 95- 95-95 by the year 2030.”
She explained that collaboration with programme implementing partners over the years had contributed immensely in the promotion of health of the people across the thirty-three local government areas of the state.
