No fewer than 469 children died from malnutrition between January and July 2025 in Kano State, with 51.9 percent of children stunted.
Professor Ruqayya Aliyu Yusuf of the Department of Information and Media Studies, Bayero University Kano (BUK), made the disclosure in a paper titled “Understanding the Basics of Behavioural Change: Towards Improving Malnutrition in Kano State”, which she presented at a media sensitisation training.
She identified malnutrition and poor dietary practices as the biggest challenges in Kano, despite Nigeria being ranked high on the Global Nutrition Index.
“The burden of malnutrition is driven by poverty, food insecurity, poor dietary habits and inadequate health alerts,” she said.
The University Don, who quoted 2025 UNICEF reports, said 40 per cent of children under 5 in Nigeria were stunted, and about 51.9 per cent of children in Kano were stunted.
In her contribution, Amina Ado Yahaya, a crop scientist, stated that Kano had the highest prevalence of underweight children under 5, at 42.6 per cent, a situation that necessitated localized homestead vegetable gardening to improve nutrition.
“Vitamin A deficiency was a leading cause of childhood blindness and increased severity of common infections like measles and diarrhoea,” she explained.
Veteran journalist and recipient of A.B.C Yola, Reporter of the Year Award (1997), Hassan Umar Shallpella, works with WAP as a Regional Correspondence. He was trained at Institute of Mass Communication and Technology Jos and Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Training School Lagos.He was a News desk Editor and a Correspondent at the Punch newspaper and till 2019, was the Deputy Editor ofThe Scope newspaper.
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