The Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on matters to do with nutrition in country mainly because of the measures that have been put up to prevent the spread of the virus.

This has been disclosed by Civil Society Organization Nutrition Alliance’s Advocacy and Campaign Manager Joseph Gausi while commenting on nutrition during the pandemic.

Gausi said several projects were not implemented due to the measures such as a ban on gathering of large crowds and some existing projects could not be carried out during the time.

“COVID-19 had a negative impact mainly on the implementation of nutrition activities, as you may be aware some of the restrictions were restraining face to face interactions so most of the activities that are there to address nutrition would not have been possible to be done with those restrictions.

“An example would be the school feeding programs as you may be aware schools were closed that means children that were benefiting from that program were affected,” said Gausi.

He went on to explain that people being laid off from work has also contributed to people not achieving good nutrition since they do not have enough to provide for their families.

When asked what could be done in the future to address such type of problems in future should a similar situation occur, Gausi  called on government to zealously fund projects to do with nutrition in the country.

Gausi said: “Government needs to invest in term of how it will implement different activities including activities that are on nutrition that why most of the times as a network we have been calling on government to be serious in terms of implementation of activities pertaining to nutrition.”