The West African Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (WASPEN) has called for greater attention to clinical nutrition and the integration of nutrition care into Nigeria’s healthcare system.
The President and Founder of WASPEN, Dr. Teresa Isichei Pounds, made the call at a press conference to announce the 2026 Malnutrition Awareness Week, organised in collaboration with the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN).
The campaign, which has the theme “Nutrition is a Team Effort,” seeks to promote a coordinated approach to addressing malnutrition in communities and healthcare facilities.
Pounds commended the Federal Government for its efforts to strengthen the country’s national nutrition agenda through initiatives such as the Nutrition 774 Initiative, the development of the National Policy on Food and Nutrition 2026–2035, sustainable nutrition financing and renewed attention to micronutrient deficiencies and the critical first 1,000 days of life.
She, however, stressed the need for national nutrition efforts to extend beyond food security, maternal health and community-based interventions to include patients receiving treatment in hospitals.
According to her, patients may arrive at hospitals already malnourished, become nutritionally depleted during illness or require increased nutritional support due to surgery, infection, cancer, trauma or critical illness.
“Nutrition can sometimes remain secondary to the condition that brought the patient to the hospital. We believe it should not,” she said.
The WASPEN president emphasised that nutrition screening, assessment, intervention and monitoring should form part of essential clinical management and quality healthcare delivery.
She noted that nutrition care should be provided across the entire continuum of care, from the community to the hospital and back to the community.
Pounds recalled that during WASPEN’s 5th Clinical Nutrition Conference in Asaba, the organisation combined professional activities with community outreach in Ogwa Ukwu and Ahaba to raise awareness about nutrition.
She said the experience reinforced the need to treat community nutrition and hospital-based nutrition care as interconnected components of the healthcare system.
Speaking on the theme of this year’s campaign, Pounds said nutrition care was a multidisciplinary responsibility involving physicians, nurses, dietitians, nutritionists, pharmacists, laboratory professionals, community health workers and other healthcare practitioners.
She clarified that teamwork did not mean that all professionals should perform the same functions, but that each should contribute their expertise towards improving patient outcomes.
The WASPEN founder called for routine identification of patients at nutritional risk, stronger multidisciplinary nutrition care structures in health facilities, improved nutrition competencies among healthcare professionals and adequate resources for patients requiring enteral or parenteral nutrition.
She also urged healthcare institutions to measure nutrition care and outcomes as part of the overall assessment of healthcare quality.
Pounds said achieving these objectives would require collaboration among government, healthcare institutions, professional organisations, academia, development partners and communities.
As part of this year’s Malnutrition Awareness Week, WASPEN is scheduled to host two webinars focusing on nutrition care and multidisciplinary collaboration.
The first webinar, titled “Nutrition Care is a Team Effort: Defining Roles, Building Partnerships, Improving Outcomes,” will examine professional responsibilities, partnerships and the policy environment needed to strengthen nutrition care.
The second, “From Screening to Recovery: The Multidisciplinary Nutrition Care Pathway in Practice,” will focus on the clinical process of nutrition screening, assessment, intervention, monitoring and recovery.
Pounds urged stakeholders to use the awareness week as an opportunity to move beyond recognising the existence of malnutrition towards implementing practical solutions.
She called for continued government leadership in making nutrition a sustained national priority and urged the country to embrace the full continuum of nutrition care.
“Malnutrition is too complex for one profession to solve. It is too important for one sector to own. And it is too serious for us to address only when it becomes severe,” she said.
She reaffirmed WASPEN’s commitment to working with relevant stakeholders to ensure that nutrition receives adequate attention both within and outside healthcare facilities.
