Medical Experts Advocate Integration of Clinical Nutrition Care into Nigeria’s Healthcare System

As Nigeria continues to strengthen its national health frameworks, medical experts are issuing a clarion call for the seamless integration of clinical nutrition care into the country’s healthcare delivery system. Dr. Teresa Isichei Pounds, President and Founder of the West African Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (WASPEN), has strongly advocated for heightened attention to clinical nutrition, warning that malnutrition among hospitalized patients remains a critical, yet often overlooked, public health challenge.

Speaking at a press conference in Abuja to announce the 2026 Malnutrition Awareness Week, organized in collaboration with the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN), Dr. Pounds emphasized that nutrition must be treated as a core component of medical treatment, not an afterthought. This year’s campaign, themed “Nutrition is a Team Effort,” seeks to promote a highly coordinated, multidisciplinary approach to addressing malnutrition across both communities and healthcare facilities.

Dr. Pounds commended the Federal Government for its recent strides in strengthening the national nutrition agenda. She specifically highlighted laudable initiatives such as the Nutrition 774 Initiative, the development of the National Policy on Food and Nutrition 2026–2035, sustainable nutrition financing mechanisms, and a renewed focus on micronutrient deficiencies and the critical first 1,000 days of a child’s life. 

However, she stressed that national nutrition efforts must extend far beyond food security, maternal health, and community-based interventions. A significant gap remains in the clinical setting, where patients frequently arrive at hospitals already malnourished, become nutritionally depleted during the course of their illness, or require intensified nutritional support due to surgery, severe infections, 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,” Dr. Pounds asserted. She argued that comprehensive nutrition screening, assessment, intervention, and continuous monitoring must form an indispensable part of essential clinical management and quality healthcare delivery. This care continuum must span from the community to the hospital, and back to the community post-discharge.

Elaborating on the campaign’s theme, Dr. Pounds clarified that effective nutrition care is inherently a multidisciplinary responsibility. It requires the synchronized expertise of physicians, nurses, dietitians, nutritionists, pharmacists, laboratory professionals, and community health workers. “Teamwork does not mean that all professionals should perform the same functions,” she explained. “Rather, each must contribute their unique expertise toward improving patient outcomes.”

To actualize this vision, WASPEN is calling for the routine identification of patients at nutritional risk upon hospital admission. Furthermore, the society is advocating for stronger multidisciplinary nutrition care structures within health facilities, enhanced nutrition competencies among healthcare professionals, and the provision of adequate resources for patients requiring specialized enteral or parenteral nutrition. 

Dr. Pounds also tasked healthcare institutions with measuring nutrition care and patient outcomes as a standard metric in the overall assessment of healthcare quality. Achieving these systemic changes, she noted, will require robust collaboration among the government, healthcare institutions, professional organizations, academia, development partners, and local communities.

“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 warned, urging stakeholders to use Malnutrition Awareness Week as a catalyst for implementing practical, scalable solutions rather than merely acknowledging the problem.

As part of the 2026 Malnutrition Awareness Week activities, WASPEN will host two pivotal webinars to deepen professional engagement. The first, titled “Nutrition Care is a Team Effort: Defining Roles, Building Partnerships, Improving Outcomes,” will examine professional responsibilities and the policy environment needed to strengthen clinical nutrition. The second webinar, “From Screening to Recovery: The Multidisciplinary Nutrition Care Pathway in Practice,” will focus on the practical clinical processes of nutrition screening, assessment, intervention, monitoring, and patient recovery.

Reaffirming WASPEN’s unwavering commitment, Dr. Pounds concluded that the society will continue to work tirelessly with all relevant stakeholders to ensure that clinical nutrition receives the urgent, sustained attention it deserves, ultimately safeguarding the health and recovery of patients across Nigeria and the broader West African region.