The State Minister of Health is encouraging the community nutritionists’ graduates to embark on farming, to reduce cases of malnutrition in the state.
He was speaking during the graduation ceremony organised by the state ministry of health, with support from Fondation Caritas Luxembourg and TADO.
Paskwal Lodae says nutritionists are not supposed to be job seekers, but be self-reliant by engaging in food production.
“You don’t talk about employment when you are a nutritionist. We have a lot of land and soil right now. UNMISS is presenting a forty thousand USD project for people who will apply and get this funding to initiate a nutrition project to put a cooperation together so that we start farming. We are supposed to look at this. The ministry of health is working towards a unified curriculum. This curriculum will include aspect of agriculture itself you will not be looking at creative aspect alone”.
Director for Nutrition at the National Ministry of Health, Khemisa Ayoub says the nutrition program has helped reduce cases of malnutrition in the country.
“Before we develop our guideline for south Sudan, the malnutrition alone rate was 23% which is a very serious situation but in 2017 we manage to develop the nutrition guideline in the country and we manage to follow nutrition program in the country, the ministry of health cannot do a nutrition alone unless we need to integrate nutrition with several sectors like agriculture wash health if we didn’t work together we will not end malnutrition in south Sudan”.
Foundation Caritas Luxemburg Coordinator, Francois Nzabahimana, says the main goal of training the students on nutrition is for them to help the community.
He says because of Covid-19 and lack of funding, the number of selected students reduced from thirty to twenty four this year.
“We decided to train thirty per year but because of Covid-19 and budget, we decided to train twenty four this year also the training give appetite to young people to continue the training that is you take somebody who is idle from the community who has no hope you give the training to come back to the community and say look there is more possibility than what we are offering and was with in south Sudan”.
Former Director General in the state Ministry of Health, Elijo Omoro Tahir, acknowledges the support given by the partners to the students.
“Our partners have been also quite good as soon as this guys get trained and given certificate they were able to employ them now the challenge that remain with us is we would have wanted this people we have them in the government payroll so that in the long run if our partners leave we should be able to have them in their places of work”.
Student’s representative, Johnson Lopem Lomana, appreciates Foundation Caritas Luxembourg for equipping them with nutritional skills.
“We thank the government for the stability of now and here then and we thank the caritas Luxembourg for supporting us throughout the challenges they supported financially we did not think back for our parents to at least support us they support us fully the student who come from far until we completed our exams”.
Since the establishment of Torit Nutrition training centre, about fifty one students have been graduated from the centre.