Nestlé Ghana has launched the NIDO Iron for Focus campaign to tackle iron deficiency among children, after data showed about half of Ghanaian children under five lack enough iron.
The company tied the campaign to its 70th year of operations in Ghana, presenting it as part of a wider push on child nutrition.
Managing Director Salomé Azevedo said the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey found that roughly 50 percent of children aged between six months and five years are iron deficient. She added that research by academics at the University of Ghana put the rate as high as 78 percent in some parts of the country.
The picture is worse among expectant mothers, she said, citing studies attributed to the National Institute of Health that estimated a deficiency rate of about 81 percent among pregnant women.
Azevedo urged parents and guardians to choose iron rich foods and prepare more balanced meals to blunt the condition’s effects. Good nutrition, she said, supports not only physical growth but also a child’s ability to concentrate, learn and take part fully in school and daily life.
She framed the campaign as an extension of the company’s purpose rather than a sales drive. “This is not just about producing and selling food,” she said.
Category Manager for Nutrition at Nestlé, Kwabena Asiedu Adaakwa, said the consequences of iron deficiency anaemia reach well beyond health. The condition can sap energy, weaken concentration in class, limit play and learning and erode confidence, he said, ultimately shaping how children grow and how well the country builds its future workforce.
Adaakwa stressed that the condition is reversible. Regular consumption of iron rich foods, including animal proteins, legumes and cocoyam leaves known locally as kontomire, can restore healthy levels, he said.
He also promoted NIDO, which Nestlé has fortified with iron, saying one sachet provides about 50 percent of the daily iron a child aged four to twelve needs. The goal, he said, is to make the product’s benefits clear to parents when they shop.
The executives cast iron deficiency as a long term development concern as much as a medical one, arguing that stronger childhood nutrition feeds directly into learning outcomes and national productivity.
