By: Steve Chirombo

Dedza, January 17, Man: Dedza district council, Principal Nutrition and HIV Officer (PNHAO), Lottie Makina on Thursday disclosed that his office managed to reach out to 721 out of school adolescents with Iron Folic Acid (IFA) by December 2024.

The disclosure came about during an engagement meeting between the District Nutrition Coordinating Committee (DNCC), District Health Management Team (DHMT) members and officials from the Department of Nutrition, HIV and AIDS (DNHA).

Makina said it was through a multi-sectoral approach between his office, other departments and partners, to reach out to such number of adolescents in the district.

“At first, when the program started in 2019, we reached out to all schools both primary and secondary, as well as to the 34 health facilities; but getting to 2022, the program was scaled down to 41 Joint Program on Girls Education (JPGE) schools and 10 health facilities,” stated Makina.

He further said realizing the lower impact, his office and other partners agreed to do the supplementation through the youth clubs in order to reach out to more adolescents.

“We reached out to 721 out of school adolescents thanks to DNHA and UNICEF. IFA supplementation in schools has been performing well although there are a few eligible adolescent girls who refused to take due to false beliefs and faith issues.

“But we saw good participation of the youths when we used the youth clubs and boys took lead in advocating for the same although the target were girls,” he stated.

However, Makina pointed out that supplementation of Micro Nutrient Powder (MNP), faced numerous setbacks due to inadequate sensitization on the program resulting in limited knowledge by caregivers on nutritional benefits of Ndisakanizeni (MNP) for their children adding if the program was to roll out again, there is a need for a massive awareness campaign.

On his part, Samson Mfuyeni, Health Promotion Officer (HPO) in the department, said their coming was to discuss with the council team on how they would accelerate both MNP and IFA in the three months’ period of January to March 2025.

He said generally, there is low uptake of MNP and IFA supplements in all implementing districts.

“Some results based survey showed inadequate knowledge by the communities on usage, importance and availability of the supplements. At the same time, it has been realized that elements of centralized distribution of the supplements in some districts also affected their uptake,” indicated Mfuyeni.

The department’s HPO also pointed out that the main objective of the roadmap was to ensure distribution of the supplements reach 80 percent in the targeted districts. These to be done through mass awareness campaigns, decentralized distribution of both logistics and supplies and the supplements using the Child Health Week Campaign Strategy.

The three months implementing period to increase uptake of the supplements is done with support from the World Bank.