The data, cited by Rádio Nacional de Angola, were released by the coordinator of the National Malnutrition Programme, Natália da Conceição, during a training course for national nutrition supervisors, in cooperation with the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).
On his turn, the doctor from the Angolan Society of Pediatrics, César Freitas, referred that, in Luanda, the country's capital, around 2600 children died from malnutrition last year.
"We here in Luanda, during the year 2022, registered more than 26,000 children with malnutrition and of these, more than 4000 had the severe form and about 10 percent died. With regard to the death of these children, depending on the units we have, deaths vary from 17 percent to 40 percent, which is considered unacceptable", he underlined.
According to the UNICEF nutrition official in Angola, Joana Abraão, the seminar aimed to train Angolan nutrition supervisors who will assess whether the system "to properly treat the malnourished child, cure, record data and report to higher level" is working.
"We have 38 percent of children suffering from chronic malnutrition in Angola and, of children under 5 years of age, 5 percent of them suffer from acute malnutrition", informed Joana Abraão, reinforcing that the objective of the training is to provide tools, to train, to carry out quality supervision.
Joana Abraão said that the next Survey of Multiple Health Indicators is being carried out by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), and will provide more recent data on the nutritional situation.
"Unicef has been supporting the Government of Angola with community work, ensuring that there are training courses like the one we are doing here today, that the Government has the products to treat malnutrition. We have been doing this for many years and we will now check with the next survey how the current situation is", he stressed.
For the treatment, continued Joana Abraão, the Angolan Government acquires the products and development partners reinforce the response capacity of the Angolan authorities.
