31 May 2016

Not having enough food to eat or not eating good food can cause serious ailments.

Speaking in an interview, Mahalapye district hospital public relations officer (PRO), Ms Pauline Bontle said cases of malnutrition in areas such as Chadibe were a cause for concern.

Ms Bontle said since February this year, they registered five cases of malnutrition in children under the age of five in Chadibe.

She explained that although government was trying by all means to avoid such cases by providing children with food ration that contained proper nutrition, some parents had a tendency of not giving their children the food ration they got from health facilities as expected.

Ms Bontle said parents always cited the reason that children were refusing to eat food ration given at health facilities.

Meanwhile, the PRO said health workers had intensified health talks at the clinics to educate parents about the importance of feeding their children.

She noted that malnutrition could be avoided if parents followed instructions and advice that they got from health workers.

She stressed that it was vital to feed children according to the instructions.

Ms Bontle added that by encouraging parents to take care of their children instead of leaving them with the elderly people in the villages who might have difficulty caring for them.

“Parents tend to leave their children at their home villages under care of elderly people to stay in towns and as a result children are not well taken care which may have an impact on their nutritional status,” she said. Ends