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Ms. Sylvetta Scott, the Programme Manager for Food & Nutrition at the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone holds a Masters degree in Nutrition from London University (King’s College) and a Masters in Public Health from the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom. She recently spoke to the Ministry's Website Team and this is what she said:-

Ms. Sylvetta Scott, Programme Manager, Food & Nutrition

Nutrition is about addressing the problem of poor nutritional status among the population in the country using different interventions especially for children under five years.

Malnutrition is a very chronic Public Health problem in the country; to date, we have a prevalence of 31% underweight among children under five years.

Women are also under-nourished; the last survey gave 12% under-nutrition among pregnant women Micro.

Micronutrient deficiency problems also exist both among children and women; Anaemia for example, is a serious micronutrient deficiency problem, and in the last nutritional survey conducted from March to May 2005, 84% of children under five were anaemic.

Also, about 64% among pregnant women and 75% among non-pregnant women were anaemic.

There has also been a problem of iodine deficiency especially in areas where local salt is produced.

A survey conducted in 2003 showed that 33% of the population surveyed was suffering from iodine deficiency especially where people consumed un-iodized salt because it is cheaper than imported salt.

Iodine deficiency among pregnant women can cause miscarriages and even if the fetus manages to survive, the deficiency results in brain damage affecting the IQ of the newborn baby.

There is also a problem of Vitamin A deficiency; even though we have not done the survey to ascertain the percentage, it is speculated that growth infection and high infant morbidity are about 40%.

Over the years, our activities have been geared towards tackling these problems and we have been making more impact in combating micronutrient deficiency. 

When the first iodine deficiency survey was done, we found out that 97% of the population sampled was affected by some form of iodine deficiency; we then got the Ministry of Trade to legislate against the sale of un-iodized salt in the country.

Approximately, 50% of salt consumed in the country was locally produced, thus it was an easy intervention, which worked.

If also we can iodize local salt, then we will be able to achieve the universal salt iodization.

When we did the anaemia survey of pregnant women in 1998, 86% were anaemic.

Again, we put in place an anaemia prevention and control programme, which consists of giving iron folate to pregnant women as soon as they became pregnant and throughout pregnancy and treated them for Malaria, while de-worming them in the second trimester.

We also counseled them on iron rich food.

The 2005 survey revealed a much lower prevalence rate of anaemia among pregnant women than in 1996, which we can attribute to intervention on safe mother- hood programme.

We are now giving two large doses of Vitamin A to children 6-59 months (one does in mid year and one at the end of the year).

Vitamin A increases the body’s immunity against infections on children so that it will not be as serious as it will otherwise be.

We conduct a workshop on Management of severe malnutrition and train trainers who in turn go and train their district staff.

Among the problems that came out of the survey on infant and young child feeding is that exclusive breast feeding up to six months was very low (about 5%), which results to high prevalence of malnutrition.

Recently, we addressed feeding in the hospitals by training caterers, cooks and stewards in a two-week workshop.

To help with the workload in the provinces, we have identified district nutrition focal points using mostly Community Health Officers (CHOs) and Environmental Health Officers (EHOs), who have been very helpful in coordinating nutritional work in the district.

These however, are not enough as each district needs at least one nutritionist.

We appreciate the training of nutritionists at N’jala University College, which has helped us to recruit more nutritionists; formerly, there were only two trained nutritionists (include myself).

Now, we are talking about seven trained and qualified nutritionists and one assistant nutritionist.

I must end by highlighting that the World Food Programme (WFP) is assisting us immensely in addressing the problems of malnutrition for pregnant women throughout pregnancy, and to lactating mothers up to six months, and to all children from six months to two years as well as children under five that are screened to be malnourished in eight districts, since 2005; and this has helped to bring down malnutrition.

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