Eastern Cape Provincial Government notes the South African Human Rights Commission Report on child malnutrition and the right to food in the province
The Eastern Cape Provincial Government notes the report on Child Malnutrition and the Right to Food in the province prepared by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC). The report released yesterday the 09 November 2023, reflects outcomes of the research conducted by SAHRC in August 2022.
Since the dawn of democracy, the Eastern Cape Provincial Government has been implementing various policy interventions and strategies towards addressing the triple challenges of poverty, inequality, and unemployment. This included addressing the concerning plight of child malnutrition in areas of the province.
While the levels of malnutrition remain very high, the province has noted a drop in the case of fatality rate due to Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) from 11.8% in 2017/18 to 7% in 2022/2023 financial year.
The drop is attributed to inter-sectoral collaboration efforts which include other departments like Social Development, SASSA, and relevant stakeholders to tackle social determinants of health affecting child malnutrition.
There is no denying that the effective prevention of malnutrition among children requires collective responsibility between government, civil society, private sector, communities, and other appropriate stakeholders.
Through the South African Social Services Agency (SASSA), the Eastern Cape provincial government has provided Child Support Grants (CSG) to millions of deserving children, thus lifting many out of the poverty line. Government is spending more than R1billion towards providing the CSG to close to 2million children that include Care Dependency and Foster Care Grants. Furthermore, there are about 3950 undocumented children that are benefiting from the CSG in the province.
Government is also implementing the School Malnutrition Programme where children are provided with nutritious meals to enhance their general wellbeing. They are also taught to establish and maintain good eating and lifestyle habits.
Through the Department of Social Development, the province continues to provide food parcels and regular meals for mothers and infants from the Social Relief of Distress as well as provision of support, guidance, parenting and feeding skills through the Indlezana Programme.
These are some of the interventions by the provincial government to support the basic health and nutrition rights of all children in under-resourced and vulnerable communities. Mothers have also been equipped with technical skills through income generating projects to generate immediate income to supplement social grants.
In addition, government has also implemented programmes targeted at child headed homes as well as children living in the streets through a community-based prevention and early intervention program to enhance efforts of protecting orphaned and vulnerable children.
The Provincial Government has also implemented programmes to address malnutrition in ensuring that mothers and children have access to services that promote the health growth and development of children as well as prevention, early identification, and management of malnutrition. These include growth monitoring and promotion of breastfeeding in all levels of
care and communities, prevention of teenage pregnancy, strengthening of nutritional supplementation and nutrition education as well as education of mothers and caregivers on proper complementary feeding practices. The department of health is also working with partners like United Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and United Population Fund (UNFPA) to implement various strategies in the community to reduce child morbidity and mortality in the province.
The collaboration between the department of Health and Social Development to champion Integrated Mother and Child Development Malnutrition Support Programme in OR Tambo and Alfred Nzo has also yielded positive result.
Malnutrition of children is mostly associated with poor households, with food security leading to compromised nutritional intake. It is also noted that children born to teenage mothers or under circumstances of alcohol and drug abuse including domestic violence are more likely to experience lack of care which affects child feeding practices.
The latest Census report indicate that the province has the second highest number of households involved in agricultural activities and government continues to encourage food production through initiatives aimed at accelerating support to agrarian initiatives to improve household food security.
The provincial government notes the recommendations of the committee which call for closer monitoring and increased interventions to deal with the challenges. We further commit to improving the socio-economic conditions of the people of the province through various strategic interventions.
