Malnutrition claims two lives in Bawku, 65 cases recorded in 2024

At least two children have died due to malnutrition, with 65 cases reported in the Bawku Municipal area in 2024.

The ongoing conflict in the region has exacerbated the situation, making life increasingly difficult for many families.

This has led to a rise in nutritional deficiencies, leaving children severely malnourished. Additionally, there have been reports of anaemia among pregnant women.

In an interview with Citi News, the Bawku Municipal Health Nutrition Officer, Bathomio Asigri, revealed that the number of malnutrition cases surged significantly in 2023, with 297 cases recorded.

“Within the Bawku municipality, what we think could be the cause of these high cases that we are recording, could partly be blamed on the conflict, I am saying this because Bawku municipality is regarded as a business hub even within the Country.

“Unfortunately, within the past three years, a lot of trading activities are not going as they used to, so families are not in good standing as they used to be when it comes to their nutrition and their food security,” he revealed.

According to him, many surveys have been conducted to scan the feeding patterns of the people in the municipality. However, the results indicate that as the pace for trading activities in the municipality for the past three years has reduced; it has also affected the number of meals people take within a day and that could be a possible cause of the high rate of malnutrition cases recorded in the town.

“We have done a lot of surveys and we have seen the number of meals taken before and after the conflict within some areas…we admit to the fact that the number of times they feed in a day has reduced and that in a way has a bearing on the number of cases that we are recording.”

Malnutrition is an imbalance between the nutrients your body needs to function and the nutrients it gets. It can mean undernutrition or overnutrition.

You can be malnourished from an overall lack of calories, or you might have a protein, vitamin, or mineral deficiency.