The government of Gombe State has pledged ₦500 million as a matching contribution to help procure life-saving nutritional supplies for children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
The fund is part of a joint partnership with UNICEF under the Child Nutrition Fund, devised to increase access to essential therapeutic foods in low-resource settings.
According to state officials, the money will be used to purchase Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a nutrient-rich, easy-to-use peanut-based paste that helps treat children with severe malnutrition. This intervention aims to scale up nutrition support across all 11 local government areas in Gombe State.
Malnutrition remains deeply entrenched in many communities in northern Nigeria, where economic hardship, rising food prices and food insecurity have strained vulnerable households and heightened demand for state-level interventions.
With this latest allocation, the state hopes not only to continue making gains in child survival and early childhood development but also to prevent a rollback triggered by supply or funding disruptions.
Child malnutrition has a huge economic cost in Nigeria, estimated at around US $56 billion annually, or roughly 12.2% of the country’s GDP. Investing in child nutrition improves health outcomes and reduces long-term economic losses tied to illness, reduced productivity, and stalled human-capital development.
