SOUTH DAYI DISTRICT HEALTH DIRECTORATE

NUTRITION ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT IN THE YEAR 2025

NUTRITION UNIT

Nutrition is very essential in human growth and development and maintenance of health throughout the life cycle of an individual.

The objective of the Nutrition Unit is to contribute to the achievement of optimal nutrition of the people, promoting child survival, and economic growth and development of the district through capacity enhancement.

The nutrition unit carries out its activities to the populace of South Dayi and its environs to maintain and promote healthy life styles of all people through growth monitoring and promotion, nutrition counseling, vitamin A supplementation, nutrition surveillance activities etc.

KEY ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT FOR THE YEAR 2025

Growth monitoring and promotion
Nutrition Counseling
Breastfeeding week celebration
Child Health Promotion week
Monitoring and supervision
Nutrition friendly school activities.
Data validation.
School health activities
Monitoring of school feeding activities
Management of Malnourished Cases
Home visit.
Monitoring of school feeding activities.
Child health promotion week celebration
Report writing

PROPORTION OF UNDERWEIGHT CHILDREN ATTENDING CWC

Underweight children are proportion of children who have their weight below -2 standard deviation to -3 standard deviation and below -3 standard deviation. For the year 2025, there has been an increase in the number of underweight children attending CWC sessions from 1% in

2024 to 1.9% at the end of year 2025. Some contributing factors leading to the increase of underweight include:

Active surveillance
Early case detention and identification of malnourished children in the district

The nutrition unit is however putting in more effort to detect and manage cases, and further decrease underweight rates among under five attending Child Welfare Clinic in the district.

CWC REGISTRANTS

CWC registrants are first ever attendants at a session and available data in the district however shows that for the year 2025, the district registered 2283 children between 0-59month as compared to 2919 at the end of 2024.The district has seen an increase in this indicator.

ANAEMIA IN PEGNANCY

This is the proportion of pregnant women who had their Hb checked both at registration and at 36weeks and have their Hb less than 7g/dl and 11g/dl. Available data in the district indicate that, 3 sub districts recorded high rates of anemia among pregnant women both at registration and at 36weeks. However, for the year 2025, anemia at 36weeks is 41.6 % as compared to 42% in 2024 which is higher than the national target of 35%.

Some factors contributing to the increase or high rates of anemia in the district include:

Pregnant women not complying to nutrition counselling.
Financial constraints on the part pregnant women.
Some pregnant women not taking routine drugs.

However, nutrition counseling and other activities are still ongoing in the district to curb the high rates of anemia in the district.

MICRONUTRIENT SUPPLEMENTION

The micro-nutrient supplementation programme is a strategy implemented to ensure that all children between the ages of 6 – 59 months are given vitamin A to protect them from developing micro-nutrient deficiencies such as blindness, diarrhoea diseases, and also improve their immunity. Vitamin A supplementation is given to children during routine services, CWC, home visit, schools supplementation, mop ups etc. All sub-district saw an increase in this indicator except Peki sub-district.

SCHOOL FEEDING ACTIVITIES

The school feeding programme is a government social protection initiative that provides one hot,nutritious meal each school day to pupils in selected public basic schools. It is a nutrition intervention activities aims at improving nutritional status of children in the South Dayi District.

Some of the activities includes, regular monitoring and support visit to the schools to ensure meal quality, quantity and timely feeding. Inspections of school environment and hygiene practices, given health educational talks on nutritional benefit on the type of food consumed.

During the year under review, some of the schools on the program visited includes; Adzokoe EP Basic school, Todome Basic school, Kpeve EP Basic school, Kpeve Model Basic school, Wegbe EP Basic school, Dzake EP Basic AB&C school and Tongor DA Basic school.

Activities carried out in the various schools in the district includes; monitoring and supervision to assess how the food is prepared,type of foodstuffs, how the food is combined in-terms of the various food groups locally available, hygiene and sanitation of the cooking environment and health educational talks on the usage and importance of adding fruits and vegetables to their diets instead of eating high risk levels of calories foods.

NUTRITION FRIENDLY SCHOOL INITIATIVE

Nutrition friendly school initiative (NFSI) is a school – based health and nutrition intervention program adopted as the platform on which to implement a set of school –based health and nutrition activities aimed at improving the school environment to make it more nutrition sensitive

Additionally, schools are an ideal place for children to observe and learn about healthy eating and nutrition as they often eat at school or buy meals and snacks there.

The NFS has four pillars and they are:

School health and nutrition guiding principle
Safe school environment
School based – delivery of health services
Skills – based health education.

The district was privileged to be part of the NFSI training and seven (7) schools, health staffs and school SHEPS were trained .The schools includes;

Tsatee Presby Primary school.
Kpeve Model Basic School.
Adzokoe EP Primary.
Tongor Agordeke D/A Basic School.
Kpalime Duga D/A Basic School.
GOVCO Demonstration School.
Avetile Methodist Basic School

Since the implementation of the NFSI, the following activities were carried out by the trained schools.

Celebration of fruit and vegetable days
Egg day celebration
Physical activity and Health Educational Talk
Promotion of school garden

SCHOOL HEALTH SERVICES

School health is about promoting physical, mental, and emotional well-being among students. During the year 2025, the nutrition unit carried out the following activities to ensure that conditions identified are referred for prompt management. Activities carried out by the unit include:

Health education on nutrition, prevention of malaria, anaemia
Physical examination of pupils (finger nails, skin, ear, mou
Education on how to keep healthy environment (clean spaces, safe water, proper handwashing
School aged vitamin A supplementation for children under five years of age.