ENOUGH CAMPAIGN PRE-LAUNCH EVENT KICKS OFF IN TANZANIA
By Alpha Nsemwa - Senior Communications and Public Engagement Officer.
World Vision Tanzania National Director, James Anditi has called on various stakeholders to come forward in the anti-hunger campaign for children known as ENOUGH, a campaign that is expected to be launched in Tanzania soon this year in August.
The National Director made the call on May 7, 2024 in Dodoma City, during the kick off meeting for the pre-launch event of the campaign, with various Nutritional stakeholders, high Government officials from different Ministries in Tanzania.
"We have met with stakeholders from the Government to see how we can continue the campaign which is called ENOUGH campaign, our aim is to involve every stakeholder who will join us and spearhead awareness that hunger can be stopped so our children can study and live well" he said
He added that ENOUGH campaign is a World Vision Global initiative that will give all Tanzanians a chance to stop hunger and malnutrition for all children from the age of 1 to 8.
"As far as we understand, this is a great challenge in our country, statistics show that some regions like Njombe, Iringa and Rukwa, still have malnutrition, so if we don't take an emergency action, our children will not have proper health to give them a chance to grow steadily", he added.
The Director of Child Development Department at the Ministry of Social Development, Gender, Women and Special Groups, Sebastian Kitiku commended the efforts taken by World Vision Tanzania to initiate ENOUGH campaign.
"We are very grateful to World Vision Tanzania for coming up with this program or this campaign to encourage nutritional issues for the period of this year 2024 until the year 2026, for us we believe that if we manage this campaign well it will bring us the fruits that we expect all Tanzanians to join the Government and World Vision in making this dream is achoved for our children", he said
Mr Kitiku said that, the Government plans to improve programs that will ensure Tanzania children reach their full health potential by 90 percent.
"Science tells us that 90 percent of human brain growth takes place between the ages of 0 and 8, and one of the things that is emphasized is good nutrition, so we aim to achieve this by all means we will cooperate with every stakeholder leading with World Vision to implement this action plan", he said.
In his final remarks he added that, Tanzania faces a nutritional challenge and the current average nutritional status in the country is 80 percent, but there are other regions where it goes up to 56 percent, which means that half of the children in some regions within the country are facing severe malnutrition challenges, which is not a good sign.
On her part, World Vision Tanzania's Central Region Health and Nutrition Expert Ms. Salome Mtango, said that nutrition is not just what we eat and is not about being full, it is important to know the six proper groups of foods we eat.
“You can have a lot of food in the family or in the community but the nutrition still remains poor, for example if we take the regions that produce a lot of food like Iringa, yet it leads to issues of malnutrition in our national statistics ", she explained.
This strategic meeting included representatives of the secretaries of the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, the Office of the President Regional Administrations and Local Government Ministry., the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Social Development, Gender, Women and Special Groups.