 Now the Federal Ministry of Health has announced plans to fortify rice with micronutrients. The deputy director and head of micronutrients of the ministry, Dr. John O'Rourkeba, dropped this hint at the launch of the Niger large-scale food fortification strategy in Lagos. Details now. Fortification is the process of adding key vitamins and minerals which are essential for good health to staple foods like edible oil, wheat, flour and sugar. About two billion people are said to lack enough micronutrients like iron and vitamin A, a greater number among them living in the developing economies. The Ministry of Health said a lot has been achieved in this regard. However, it spoke of new inroads. The federal government is doing a lot through fortification, encouraging large-scale food fortification. Whereby we identified the food vehicles we mentioned earlier. At least eight percent of families in Nigeria have stand to be corrected, consume rice. Now governments said okay, in the wisdom we are going to fortify rice with zinc and iron. International agencies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation underscored a need to ensure good nutrition for Nigerians, especially expecting mothers and children. This it has done by partnering local agencies like NAFTAG and a standard organization of Nigeria, SON, and Moncaves. If diets get stressed from factors like food insecurity, poverty, I mean, you consume basic foods like maize flour, salt, oil, and these can be, I mean, added micronutrients, which help people to get to the opportunities in life and health and that's important. But, you know, by the time they're released from the factory and it goes into the market, so it has always been very difficult because some of these forticans are sensitive to light, light vitamin E, you know, is sensitive to temperature. And the statistics, many of them are quite scary when it comes to the impacts of micronutrient deficiency on different population groups in Nigeria. But there are things that we can do and there are things that we must do. In Nigeria, all into bad nutrition, 7% of the children population are said to die before five years, a greater number of which are in the poorer northern part of the country. However, the enormous task of food fortification should be embraced by all Nigerians rather than being seen as the responsibility of relevant stakeholders alone. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.