Background and Objective: The COVID-19 has prompted many countries to adopt temporary “lockdown” as an approach to curtail viral spread. This study investigated the food consumption and coping strategies of urban-households in Nigeria during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
Methods: This cross-sectional, web-based study employed a snowball sampling technique to recruit 477 household heads/spouses living in cities/towns of six Nigerian states by encouraging those sent the survey questionnaire link to share with their eligible contacts. Logistic regression was used to reveal the socio-economic determinants of households’ food consumption and coping strategies, as reported on self-administered questionnaires. Respondents were asked to retrospectively indicate how lockdown affected their food consumption.
Results: More than half (55.7%) of respondents and 50.8% of their spouses reported a decline in their earning capacity. A high (>4days/week) mean consumption frequency of six food groups was reported. Consuming less expensive (mean, 2.64 ± SD 2.44 days/week) or less preferred foods (1.93 ± 2.04 days/week), and meal rationing (limit portions at meal time -1.50 ± 2.11 days/week, reduce meal number- 1.4 ± 2.19 days/week, limit adults intake- 1.28 ± 2.18 days/week) were the most common coping strategies adopted by the households.. The likelihood of adopting coping strategies was significantly higher amongst households with income decline, the less educated and self-employed categories.
Conclusion: In this study, a high frequency of diverse food consumption and mild adoption of food related coping strategies was generally observed, however the impact of the lockdown on food coping strategies was significantly felt by some groups. Efforts to target social assistance programs to these disadvantaged groups should be promoted, as it will strengthen their resilience to cope with food crisis.
Background::
Under-nutrition in school age children have proven to be responsible for poor academic performance as well as declined work capacity, poor health/reproductive function later in life. Nutritional assessment is key to monitoring the effectiveness of intervention programs aimed at reducing under-nutrition. Yet, there is a gross absence of national data on the nutritional status of school age children.
Objective::
This study was designed to pool existing recent data on anthropometrically determined under-nutrition prevalence of school age children and provide a clear picture of the regional and national malnutrition situation of school aged children in Nigeria.
Methods::
Published studies on the anthropometric status of school age children in Nigeria from 2005 to 2019 were reviewed. Eligible studies were those that used the acceptable international growth standards.
A total of 27 articles which assessed 17,820 school age children met the inclusion criteria.
Results::
Results showed that 37.9% of studies have adopted the WHO 2007 growth reference. The overall pooled stunting, underweight and wasting/thinness prevalence of school age children in Nigeria are 25.5 + 20.4%, 24.4 + 18.8%, 20.6 + 17.4% respectively. More than half of the studies had their under-nutrition prevalence above the public health significance thresholds. Stunting (53.2%) and underweight (36.9%) was most prominent in the North West region while the South Southern part of Nigeria had the highest prevalence of acute malnutrition (39.5%).
Conclusion:
Study suggests that inclusion of school age children in national nutrition surveys and scale-up of intervention programs will reduce these high under-nutrition prevalence.
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