adminThe Herald, 30 August, 1984
ABOUT 250 000 children under the age of five are being fed under the supplementary feeding programme because of the drought, the Minister of Health, Cde Sydney Sekeramayi, said in Harare yesterday.
Opening a three-day evaluation workshop of the feeding programme, Cde Sekeramayi said the project was only a temporary measure to stop children from starving to death and it should not obscure the long-term need for making communities self-reliant in the feeding of their children.
The prolonged drought had however required the need for a vastly expanded and improved programme which the workshop would look into.
Cde Sekeramayi said the workshop should pay attention to the need to develop the feeding points into a system for national nutrition surveillance, the promotion of locally available foods for meeting nutrition requirements and education on nutrition and health matters.
The child supplementary feeding programme was started in 1980 by some non-government organisations after a few random surveys had shown pockets of malnutrition in the country.
The malnutrition situation had worsened because of drought and the Ministry of Health and the Swedish International Development Agency came to the rescue with administrative and financial support.
Cde Sekeramayi said the ministry and Sida had initiated garden groups in 1982 to produce groundnuts and other nutritious foods as the first step towards phasing out the feeding programme, but continued drought had prevented this.
He hoped the workshop would define strategies to phase out the programme by early next year.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
Zimbabwe’s supplementary feeding scheme has undergone significant changes and adaptations in response to the ongoing food insecurity exacerbated by the El Niño-induced drought.
The Zimbabwean Government has revived its school feeding programme, targeting approximately 580,000 at-risk children across both rural and urban areas.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter