Rising Cost of Living Contributing to fifty percent of under five mortality in Nigeria- Stakeholders

                      The Vice Chancellor, University of Benin, Professor Lilian Salami and other stakeholders  have raised  alarm over rising cost of living which has led to malnutrition in children and contributing  to fifty percent of under five mortality in Nigeria.

“The workshop is expected to give us counsel how to feed the child with cheaper alternatives that are highly nutritious if we must deal with the future. The challenging economy now affects the children,” she noted.

Prof. Sadoh expressed appreciation to the Vice Chancellor of UNIBEN for providing a physical structure for the institute and she disclosed that the Institute has been involve in the enlightening of the public on issues that affects them as well as run educational  programmes on child health care and others.

In his lecture, Prof. Elijah Ewah disclosed that to have good nutrition, we need balanced diet that can be found in our locale and the child should be fed with varieties of food to avoid malnutrition.

According to him, eating a varied, well-balanced diet means eating a variety of foods from each of the five food groups daily in the recommended amount and he demonstrated how to provide palatable food for the children.

He however pointed out that people are stressed and angry because of hunger and food insecurity caused by poor governance.

The Dean, faculty of Agriculture, University of Benin, Prof. Orhue said Agriculture cannot be neglected and he advocated that when building a house, a space should be created for domestic gardening because we do not expect people from other countries to come and feed us.

In the same vein, the Executive Secretary,  Edo State Primary Health Care Development Agency Dr. Omosigho Izedonmwen, enjoined Nigerians to recalibrate the economy and change their orientation by going back to giving healthy nutrition to children, saying that, “ If you have a car in your garage, have two chickens in your back yards,”

Prof. Charles Eregie and other speakers also emphasized on the importance of exclusive breast feeding which is the mother of all child survival intervention,  the role of nutritious food as the best medicine, value addition in Arable and livestock products and leveraging food processing  for economic growth.