‘Children need good nutrition for growth’
The Minister for Health, Ms Sherry Ayitey, has underscored the essence of providing children with food rich in good nutrition as a positive step in enhancing child growth and development and reducing infant mortality.
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Speaking at the launch of a new Nestle Cerelac Millet in Accra, she said through various governmental and non-governmental programmes and interventions, significant progress had been made towards attaining the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), especially those targeted at reducing by half, the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty and reducing child mortality.
Nestle Ghana Limited, producers of beverages and food items, launched the product on the theme: “Achieving MDG4: The role of iron fortified complementary foods.”
The new product, which contains nutrients such as carbohydrate, protein, milk, calcium, iron and vitamin C, is to help enrich the diet of children in order to address anaemia in children.
She said it was a fact that strategies and efforts by multinational organisations, in collaboration with governmental institutions to reduce morbidities associated with infant mortality such as iron-deficiency anaemia, were greatly laudable.
She acknowledged health care professionals for doing so much when it came to educating mothers on appropriate complementary feeding, adding that “it is sad that some mothers, for various reasons, still offer inappropriate complementary foods to their children which result in malnutrition and its associated complications and ill-health”.
Ms Ayitey said it was the mandate of the government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service and stakeholders to promote good nutrition among infants and young children.
The Managing Director of Nestle Ghana Limited, Mr Moataz El Hout, said the company had established a project in the Northern Region of Ghana to train farmers to produce quality grains, adding that this innovation would emphasise Nestle’s commitment to promoting good nutrition through local initiatives.
At a press soiree preceding the launch of the product, the Brands Manager of Nestle Ghana Limited, Ms Grace Nkrumah, called on mothers and the general public to enrich the diet of their children with food rich in millet to provide them with a balanced diet.
Daily Graphic/Ghana