Members of Parliament (MPs) on the Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security have urged residents in Kamwenge district to intensify efforts to fight malnutrition after a survey ranked it with the second highest number of malnutrition cases in Uganda.
The MPs made the call while speaking to people at Biguri town council during an evaluation of the impact of malnutrition in Kamwenge district on May 27, 2024, ahead of the district’s celebration of International Day for Nutrition scheduled for May 28, 2024.
Joel Leku, the Terego West MP, thanked Kamwenge residents for working towards reducing cases of malnutrition, noting that few people are reported to be malnourished.
Leku, however, added that in Terego, almost everybody is malnourished. Leku further said that he totally lost the vision of Kamwenge being malnourished because he didn’t see malnourished people.
“In Terego, it’s hard to find a family with an acre. I have seven sub-counties; four of them don’t have land at all. But we are here looking for malnourished children where they have acres of land. However, nutrition is across the country, and I am sure it goes with poverty index levels, and Kamwenge isn’t one of the poorest districts in the country because I see everybody has something to sell. The only problem is, they sell it all; that’s what we need to fight for,” Leku said.
He further emphasized according to the information, Kamwenge has varieties of food and queried why it is ranked number two in the country as a district with malnutrition.
Susan Abeja, the Otuke district woman representative, linked Kamwenge’s high malnutrition rates to gender inequality and marital violence, in which men sell the food raised by women, leaving women to bear the burden of feeding their families.
“Men in Kamwenge should allow their women to hold responsibility in their families; they should stop selling food out of their women’s houses and should be sensitized. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be the reason for this malnutrition pandemic in Kamwenge,” Abeja stated.
Abeja was appreciative of the enough rain in Kamwenge, fertile land, and enough food. She, however, wondered why the district was ranked number two in the country for malnutrition and promised to create groups that would help discuss and bring ways forward.
The Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security was established in September 2018 as a non-partisan body that comprises past and present Members of Parliament from different parliamentary fora and committees, with the conviction and commitment to promote and ensure that all citizens have good quality health through having enough food and nutrition.
