PARENTAL NEGLEGENCE; ALEADING CAUSE OF MULNUTRITION IN ARUA CITY

A health worker takig measurements to esablish a childs progress

By Frida Ngamita
Arua city  

Health workers in Arua city are faulting poor parenting as the major contributor to the high cases of malnutrition.
The health educators revealed that, some mothers have limited time for their babies, leaving them with the young caretakers as they focus more on money making ventures. 

Dr Wound Candia Ernest, a health educator at Ediofe Health Centre III says, mothers have failed to follow the 5 times routine feeding for their babies.
“Currently people are depending on SACCO’s to save their money, making them to get up very early in the morning to go and look for money to save. They come back in the evening or late in the night. This makes the time for feeding the children not to be followed. Because of going very early in the morning to sell, the children starve the whole day and they do not feed them on time and when the mothers come back they cannot cook.”

Mothers recieving food items for the mulnurished children at Ediofe Heath center III

While extending support to malnourished babies at ediofe health center, the in charge, Sister Lawrence Limio, explained some of the challenges they are facing while trying to boast the children’s nutrition.

“The children are not improving and some of them stay longer so you wonder why they are not improving. It is because we don’t follow them to their homes to know how they prepare what is given to them. The question is, are there no supplements at their homes? It’s difficult to know. Some of them being orphans, are taken care of by their grandmothers who are not active enough to feed them routinely. Since the babies cannot feed even twice in a day sometimes, it is hard for them to recover quickly. Babies need frequency of feeding,” she emphasized.
 
Driciru Stella, one of the beneficiary of the project encourages parents to take all the lessons given to them so as to improve on the health and nutrition of their babies.
“They said parents should eat five times a day and that is what we are doing. So, mothers should follow the lessons given by the health workers. Let us ensure we come home early and listen to all the information given to us.”  

According to the information from the city health department, the cases of malnutrition have risen with Ayivuni Health center III registering the highest number, followed by Adumi health center IV which has mainly been attributed to the teenage pregnancy.