The National nutrition Program of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Standards Bureau has called for mandatory food fortification of basic food products in the local market in accordance with ECOWAS protocols.
Amadu Jogor Bah Deputy Executive Director Sierra Leone Standards Bureau gave a brief background of food fortification and the role of the Sierra Leone Standards Bureau in putting in place regulatory guide lines and inspection manuals for food manufacturers.
He said both locally manufactured and imported food products should be fortified according to the ECOWAS protocol. The absence of Food Fortification has caused 1.4 percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) loss due to malnutrition as the underlining cause of deaths among children under the age of five.
The National Food Fortification Alliance has been established in Sierra Leone to monitor and implement social mobilization activities that would accompany Food Fortification with micronutrients at all levels, in accordance with ECOWAS protocols.
In a resolution of the 7th Assembly of Health Ministers of ECOWAS on food, fortification was identified as one of the interventions to control vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Dr. Aminata Koroma of the National Nutrition Program Ministry of Health and Sanitation in her presentation said “the ministry will provide technical assistance to the private sector, in a bid to regularize the fortification process in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Standards Bureau, so as to implement the ECOWAS protocol”.
Food regularly “consumed by women and children should be fortified by adding micronutrients, salt cereal flour and vegetable oil can make significant difference in the wellbeing of the people”.
She added that the Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the Ministry of Trade and Industry are collaborating to put in place a “regulatory frame work for locally manufactured food products to be fortified using guide lines of the Sierra Leone Standards Bureau”.
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