Lagos State government moves to check insecurity

The Office of Civic Engagement, Lagos State, has said the government is keen on addressing insecurity through the N500 million Mother Infant and Child (MICH) Initiative. The initiative is aimed at ending malnutrition in indigent pregnant women across the local councils in the state.

Special Adviser to Lagos State Governor on Civic Engagement, Aderemi Adebowale, who disclosed this at a media parley yesterday, said the programme would see about 1,140 indigent pregnant women in the state get nutritional food packs every week to enable them feed properly during their pregnancy period until birth.

She said the MICH initiative would address the psychological aspect of the child in the early years using a preventive approach, noting that under-development of infant brains is responsible for insecurity in the country.

Adebowale said the MICH Initiative, which is conceived by the Office of Civic Engagement, would enable the state government cater for the nutrition of 20 indigent pregnant women from all the councils in the state for the first trimester of the pregnancy.

Also speaking, the representative of the Lagos State Primary Health Care Board, Dr. Wale Akeredolu, said the programme would also reduce maternal and infant mortality at the primary healthcare centres, which is associated with malnutrition during pregnancy, as well as improve the health indices of the state.