ARUA CITY STRUGGLES WITH CHILD MALNUTRITION AS CASES REMAIN UNDETECTED IN COMMUNITIES

By Sunday Amandi

Arua city

Arua City continues to register high cases of malnutrition among the children in the community and calls for action from every stakeholder to address the matter of malnutrition, as this was to a greater extent attributed to low OPD attendance by the community members.

According to the bio-statistics from the city, there was one hundred eighty thousand nine hundred eighty OPD attendance from January to March this year representing 0.05% per capita, below the ministry of health standard, and the children under 5 had 15% OPD attendance.

At the nutrition coordination meeting for the nutrition committee in the city, Sr. Sally Andezu, the senior nursing officer calls for an increase in nutrition screening in the communities to identify the malnourished children saying assessment is still low, leaving a good number of the affected children unattended to,

“Nutrition assessment has not picked well both at the facility level and at the community where we have entrusted the VHTs to support us, so meaning when if we don’t asses these children we don’t know the cases, the cases Arua hospital is telling us were seen in the facility, so how about these ones who are not assessed, if we can increase on assessment, maybe we would be able to fish out many of these malnourished children,” Sr. Sally said.

Michael Adam, the city bio-statistician emphasizes that, the children under five are supposed to be assessed on nutrition so as to help them in time but this has not been the case,

“Mot times we expect all our clients who go to our facilities should be assessed of malnutrition, the under-fives, whenever they go to the facility for any condition, are supposed to be assessed at triage or at OPD, maybe their marks are to be measured but you will see that the data is not really giving us a good picture,” Michael said.

However, Jobel Ayiko, the city commercial officer says, low level of food production in the region plays a greater role in increasing the cases of malnutrition among the children, saying there is need for change of action by the community,

“Our people of good number have said bye bye to agriculture, then the impact of this is starvation, malnutrition, when there is no food, what you have eaten is little quantity, when we were growing, things like beans, things like cassava, even ground nuts , each family was supposed to produce them,” said Jobel.

Food security and nutrition in West Nile still remains critical with an overall house hold food security rate estimated at only 28.6% according to UBOS report as of late 2025,and accordingly, this increases cases of malnutrition among the children in the community.