In four years since 2009, government
has spent an estimated Shs 1.8 trillion on stopping and treating malnutrition,
a new report by Save the Children International’s Child Rights Governance
Initiative (CRGI) reveals.
The report titled, ‘Budget transparency and Child Nutrition’
says it costs the country about $120 (Shs 300,000) on average to treat a malnourished person and the opportunistic
infections. This is equivalent to 5.6 per cent of the country’s gross domestic
product.
According the 2011 Uganda Demographic
Health Survey (UDHS), an estimated 2.4 million children (about 33 per cent)
aged less than five are stunted and about 110,220 children have died
in the last five years due to malnutrition.
“Uganda could save Shs 266bn if the
prevalence of stunted children is reduced to 10 per cent. Unfortunately,
adequate nutrition is seldom treated and prioritized as a human right and there
are flaws in accountability and transparency,” said Peterson Kato Kikomeko, a
senior lecturer at Kyambogo University, during the recent launch of the report.
The report also revealed that access
to budget information about the government’s child nutrition interventions was limited
at national level and almost non-existent at sub-national level.
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| Photo/Courtesy |
By far, Karamoja, West Nile and the
southern western region have the highest number of stunted and wasted (low
weight for height) children.
Being stunted has long-term effects
on children including loss of cognition, low self-esteem, societal
marginalization and poor performance at school as their brains do not reach
their full potential.
Boaz Musiimenta, a senior policy
analyst in the prime minister’s office says malnutrition is also associated
with almost a quarter of all maternal deaths, despite it being preventable.
“Such preventable deaths reduce
Uganda’s gross domestic product by an estimated 4.1per cent, costing US$ 310
million in lost economic productivity every year,” he said.
“Most mothers simply boil bananas add
salt and a meal is fixed and instead of giving children a balanced diet, many
people, especially in rural areas focus on quantity.”
To curb malnutrition in the country,
Musiimenta advocates both direct and indirect interventions. Direct
interventions include: food supplements, micronutrients powders and
fortification of the food that the children eat whereas indirect interventions
include: de-worming, safe drinking water and malaria control among others.
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Civil society organizations under
their umbrella association; the Uganda Civil Society Coalition on Scaling up
Nutrition (UCCO-SUN) urged government to provide detailed and robust
information about child nutrition interventions, both at national and sub
national levels.
“Regular information should be
provided throughout all phases of the budget process and at all levels of
government and information on planned child nutrition spending over the
multiple budget years should be released,” reads a UCCO-SUN statement released
during the launch of the child nutrition report.
It adds that timely annual accounts
must be submitted to independent audit offices to allow for timely release of
audit reports. Independent audit institutions should also be made available for
public scrutiny after completion.
The new report focuses on investment
in children aiming to ensure that all children, especially the most
marginalised, benefit from greater public investments and better use of
society’s resources in realising children’s rights.
It was launched under the theme,
“Recommitting to scaling up nutrition: the need for effective accountability
and transparency” in Kampala.
