By Sani Idris
Alive & Thrive, in collaboration with the Kaduna State Primary Health Care Board (SPHCB), has trained Community Volunteers (CVc) on
Community Mobilisation and awareness/demand creation on Multiple Micronutrients Supplement (MMS).
Alive & Thrive is an initiative to save lives, prevent illness, and ensure healthy growth and development through optimal maternal nutrition, breastfeeding, and complementary feeding practices.
The training, which took place on Wednesday at Primary Health Care (PHC) Ungwan Shanu, was conducted for CVs across Kaduna North, Igabi and Chikun LGA of the state
Other trainees were LGA Nutrition Focal
Persons (NFPs), LGA Health Educators and LGA Community Engagement Focal Persons.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that MMS is a type of nutritional supplement designed to provide essential vitamins and minerals to individuals, particularly pregnant women, adolescents, and women of reproductive age.
It improves maternal and child health, reduce micronutrient deficiencies, prevents anaemia in pregnant women and enhance nutrition outcomes.
During the training, Alive & Thrive’s State Coordinator, Mrs Sarah Kwasu, gave a brief overview of the NGO’s refocus on MMS.
Kwasu stated that the uptake of MMS interventions could only be promoted and sustained at scale where key players are
supported, skills are improved for effective community mobilisation, awareness, demand creation, and systems are strengthened to support service delivery.
Kwasu therefore said it was important to provide key stakeholders with knowledge to support effective MMS uptake.
“In promoting the uptake of MMS, we have oriented NFPs and trained key state
stakeholders on community mobilization, awareness and demand creation, this training is now cascaded across the 23 LGAs of Kaduna state with the support of the community based organisations and the SPHCB,”she said
The coordinator said part of what the CVs and key LGA stakeholders would be doing on community awareness and demand creation will include working with community influencers/stakeholders to improve MMS.
She added that the CVs would also educate pregnant women/adolescent, woman of reproductive age and the general population, and promote MMS acceptance and support among community influencers.
Doing so, Kwasu said it would increase antenatal care attendance for quality MMS services, and to address possible norms/barriers that may affect it uptake.
Earlier, the Alive & Thrive’s Program and Monitoring/Evaluation Assistant, Mrs Victoria Adams and the State Health Educator, Isah Yusha’u facilitated the training sessions.
The duo oriented the CVs on MMS, its benefits, who should take it, adherence and its dos and don’ts.
The facilitators emphasised that MMS would not be given at the community but at the health facilities, where CVs are to provide the community with it key information and guide them to access it at the facility and create demand for antenatal care.
They duo added that, the information/messages the CVs would give at the community is different from the information given at the facility.
“There is approved protocols on how MMS should be given, so, it is necessary for them to refer women of reproductive age to the health facility to access Maternal Infant and Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN) and MMS services,”the duo said.
At the end of the community mobilisation and awareness/demand creation sessions, Adams took the participants through community data capturing and reporting tool.
The purpose, she said was to strengthen CVs capacity on proper documentation.
Adams equally said the long-term goal of the community data reporting was to sure consistency and availability of quality data reported which are used to inform community program decisions.
One of the NFP, Kaduna North LGA, Furera Jumare, said women are used to ion and folic acid supplements, where transitioning to the MMS required community mobilisation, awareness and demand creation so as it doesn’t look strange to the women when it arrives.
She called on communities to cooperate and listen to the CVc when they bring the message of MMS which would be of importance to them.
One of the CV at a Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition site, Hafsa Idris of Kawo, Rafin Guza community, said she never knew about MMS.
She therefore pledged to continue employing the strategy of going door to door, naming ceremonies, Islamic schools and meeting with community leaders to educate them of MMS before it reaches their community.
Also, Zara’u Shuaibu, a CV from Igabi LGA, Rigasa ward, said as she is empowered with knowledge on community mobilization, awareness, and demand creation, she is now equipped to educate pregnant women, adolescents, and community leaders on the benefits and importance of MMS.(NAN)
