Iringa Municipal Council has taken nutrition and child growth monitoring services closer to households through community health and nutrition days, as the region continues to grapple with one of the country’s highest rates of childhood stunting.
The latest initiative was held at Kihesa Kilolo A Street in Mkimbizi Ward, where residents accessed nutrition screening, screening for non-communicable diseases, Vitamin A supplements, deworming medicine, malaria preventive tablets and mosquito nets.
The exercise also included practical cooking demonstrations and nutrition education from health and nutrition experts. The initiative follows The Citizen’s investigation into childhood stunting in Iringa, which found gaps in growth monitoring, practical nutrition guidance and follow-up of children with malnutrition.
According to the 2022 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey and Malaria Indicator Survey, 56.9 percent of children under five in Iringa were stunted, compared with about 30 percent nationally.
Iringa Municipal Nutrition Officer Anzaeli Msigwa said the council had also equipped streets across the municipality with basic equipment to enable communities to monitor children’s growth and identify potential health concerns earlier.
‘Iringa Municipal Council has launched nutrition equipment for the Street Health and Nutrition Day. Each street has received equipment including scales for measuring adults’ weight and height, scales for children under five, blood pressure machines, blood sugar testing machines and height boards for children. The equipment has been handed over to ward executive officers,’ said Ms Msigwa
The equipment was handed over to ward executive officers as part of efforts to strengthen community-level health and nutrition services.
The availability of equipment at community level could help address one of the challenges identified in The Citizen’s earlier investigation: delayed identification of growth problems and limited follow-up outside health facilities.
In one case documented by The Citizen, a caregiver only learnt that her child had moderate malnutrition after a health worker measured the child and explained the growth chart. She said she had previously associated clinic visits mainly with vaccinations and illness rather than monitoring growth.
The municipality’s approach also reflects the need to make nutrition services more accessible to families whose economic activities make regular attendance at lengthy clinic or community sessions difficult.
The earlier investigation found that some mothers and caregivers struggled to attend nutrition sessions because they were working in farms, markets and other income-generating activities.
Nutrition experts interviewed by The Citizen said effective interventions require more than telling parents to improve their children’s diet. Families need practical information on what to prepare, how frequently to feed children and how to achieve dietary diversity using foods available and affordable to them.
The new community-based services therefore provide an opportunity to move from identifying stunting as a major problem to strengthening early detection, counselling and follow-up at household level.
However, the impact of the initiative will depend on how consistently the equipment is used, whether children identified with growth problems are followed up and whether caregivers receive practical support after screening.
Iringa’s nutrition indicators remain a concern. UNICEF data show that 56.9 percent of children under five in the region were stunted in 2022, while only 16.1 percent of children aged 6-23 months received a minimum acceptable diet.
For families in communities such as Mkimbizi, bringing weighing, height measurement and nutrition counselling closer to home could provide an important link between detection and action, particularly for children whose growth problems might otherwise go unnoticed.