The minister said the country could not sustain the gains recorded under the Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative without making nutrition a central component of maternal and child healthcare.
According to him, the progress recorded in the past 42 months of President Bola Tinubu’s administration and 35 months of the health compact had created an opportunity to expand nutrition interventions through the improving primary healthcare delivery system.
He listed the achievements to include the recruitment of more than 15,000 community-based health workers, retraining of almost 80,000 frontline health workers, a significant reduction in facility-reported maternal and child deaths, increased antenatal care attendance and deliveries by skilled birth attendants, as well as more than fourfold growth in primary healthcare utilisation.
He said the improvements should be leveraged to ensure that nutrition interventions reached more households, rather than being delivered through isolated campaigns.
“Community nutrition delivery must integrate, and not run in parallel. Nutrition services should ride on routine primary health care contacts, including antenatal care, immunisation, MNCH Week and community outreach, rather than stand-alone campaigns,” he said.
Salako identified multiple micronutrient supplements for pregnant women, exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life, appropriate complementary feeding from six months, infant and young child feeding counselling, vitamin A supplementation, deworming, growth monitoring and early detection and treatment of wasting as essential interventions requiring expansion.
He noted that multiple micronutrient supplements had been included in the Essential Medicines List, with local production already taking place in Kano and Lagos, adding that efforts were ongoing to expand production under the Presidential Initiative for Unlocking the Healthcare Value Chain.
The minister also called on state governments to provide domestic resources for nutrition commodities and strengthen supply chains as part of the essential primary healthcare package.
He urged the states to leverage matching funding arrangements, including the Child Nutrition Fund, to ensure sustainable financing and availability of essential nutrition products.
Salako, however, stressed that improving nutrition outcomes required collaboration beyond the health sector, calling for the involvement of agriculture, water and sanitation, education and social protection agencies.
He said the Nutrition 774 initiative, under the leadership of Vice-President Kashim Shettima as Chairman of the National Council on Nutrition, provided a framework for coordinating interventions across the 774 local government areas.
According to him, the initiative’s approach of one goal, one plan, one budget and one report would promote effective coordination and ensure that nutrition interventions reached communities.
“The Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare fully endorses N774 as the right framework for convergence at the grassroots and expects it to mirror the SWAp of the health sector for nutrition,” he said.
He added that the ministry would work with the Office of the Vice-President and the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning to incorporate nutrition indicators into the health sector-wide approach (SWAp) results framework and JAR scorecards.
Salako reaffirmed the ministry’s commitment to working with state governments and local government health authorities to use the renewed primary healthcare system as a platform for delivering nutrition services across all 774 local government areas.
He said the success of the next phase of the Renewed Hope Agenda should be measured not only by improvements in healthcare facilities but also by better nutritional outcomes for mothers and children.
“From next year’s Joint Annual Review, we look to report on healthier and better-nourished Nigerian children,” he said.