The federal government has trained 30 logistics managers in nutrition commodity management in Katsina State.

The two-day training exercise is being organised in collaboration between the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) and an international organisation, Nutrition International (NI).

Ladidi Bako, the director of nutrition at the Federal Ministry of Health, said this at the inauguration of the exercise on Saturday in Katsina.

Represented by Ayo Hosea, assistant chief scientist officer in the ministry, Mr Bako said the exercise aimed to onboard the nutrition commodity in the Nigeria Health Logistic Management Information System (NHLMIS), introduced by the federal government.

She said it would also raise a pool of nutrition logistics managers nationwide to use the NHLMIS for accountability of nutrition commodities.

“The two-day training is also to integrate the nutrition commodity logistic system into the existing platform NHLMIS.

“The main objective of this meeting is to raise a pool of nutrition logistics managers that will cascade training to all states of the federation.

“For Katsina, the participants will cascade the training to all the nutrition officers in the state so that they will be able to enter the nutrition commodity into NHLMIS so that it will be visible to the people at the federal level to know how the state nutrition officers are managing the commodity supplied to them by partners and the government,” she said.

She said this would support the state on how to input data on the NHLMIS to relate to the government and the partners on utilising the commodity.

Sani Isah-Umar, the state NI coordinator, said the organisation was supplying nutrition commodities such as Vitamin A, iron, and folic acid to states in Nigeria.

According to him, there is a gap in the management of the commodities at the national and state levels due to the lack of nutrition indicators in the LMHIS.

He said the exercise would build the capacity of managers to bridge gaps and enable them to make key nutrition decisions and monitor usage and management of nutrition commodities through the national tool.

Mr Isa-Umar said the measure would check duplication, promote transparency and accountability, and strengthen the state’s information in nutrition programme decision-making.

(NAN)