Combating severe acute malnutrition in Nigeria using locally sourced produce for formulation of ready to use therapeutic foods

Title : Combating severe acute malnutrition in Nigeria using locally sourced produce for formulation of ready to use therapeutic foods

Abstract:

Cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) in children is of great public health burden to many developing nations, with Nigeria ranking second in the world, after Pakistan. According to UNICEF (2023) the  prevalent rate in Nigeria is 32 % of the  children under five years of age. Treatment of SAM can either be by hospital or the use of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTFs). Hospital treatment is highly inaccessible, especially for cases among the rural dwellers, while the standard RUTFs  supply is mainly of short-term, usually obtained through external funding agencies, like UNICEF and WHO. The treatment of SAM in the country is becoming increasingly difficult, even exeberating  with recent pronuncement of aid withdrawal by the current USA government of President Trump. Therefore, there is need to look inward for the treatment  of this life threatening condition. In this research project,  formulation of  RUTF was carried out using locally sourced produce/materials of groundnut, soybean, millet and crayfish by composite. Nutritional quality of the formulates were evaluated and compared WHO  (2021) recommended RUTF. While the formualates have good nutritional profiles comparable to the standard RUTFs, uping of some nutrition elements is recommeded before putting them to use by locals and even beyond.

Biography:

Prof. Sylvester Obaike Adejo (PhD, 2015), is of the Department of Chemistry, Benue State University, Makurdi-Nigeria, and  Deputy Director, Centre for Food Technology and Research of the same University. A winning academic, he was at the King’s College, London (1990) under British Council Scholarship, and University of Copenhagen, Denmark (2018) for Innovative University Teaching and Supervision training. He  has  conducted extensive research in corrosion and adsorption studies, and food formulation and micronutrients; supervising (MSc & PhD) awarding winning projects. He has presented research papers in many conferences and published over sixty journal articles. He proposed the Adejo-Ekwenchi Adsorption Isotherm Model (2014) and new corrosion monitoring technique (2019) as well as formulation of infant formulate from mango, an award-winning work (Student Innovative Research Award, 2022). Prof. Adejo was listed as a top-ranking scientist in Nigerian by Google in 2015/2016.