SUVA, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The anaemia symptoms have been increasing among Fijian children, partly due to more working mothers having less time to take care of their children, a health official said on Tuesday.
Fiji's National Advisor for Non-Communicable Diseases Isimeli Tukana said on Tuesday that the South Pacific Island state now has a lot of working mothers and this could be a reason behind an increase in anaemia among children.
Around 75 percent of the children around the age of two are anaemic, according to Tukana. The rise in anaemia was due to the fact that more Fijian mothers were unable to monitor what their children were being fed by house girls or baby sitters, he explained.
Tukana said that mothers needed to inform baby sitters about the food they wanted to feed to their children during their absence at work.
"You need to tell the baby sitter and the house girl how to feed the child; otherwise, the child will become more of the baby sitter and the house girl than the mother," he said.
The advisor urged Fijian mothers to be specific with nutrition needs for their children.
"There has to be some negotiation inside, particularly nutrition, you have to clearly plan and tell the house girl or the baby sitter, this is what you have to feed my children, morning, lunch and dinner before I come back from work," he said.
Green leafy vegetables should be consumed daily to reduce the risk of anaemia, he added.
Anaemia is when a person has less haemoglobin to transport oxygen around the body for development. But the increasing prices of vegetables are worrying consumers.
Alisi Duva, a mother of three was shopping at the Suva Municipal Market on Tuesday. She said that with 10 Fijian dollars (about 5 U.S. dollars), all she could buy was a bundle of water cress, spring onions, a few cucumbers and coriander leaves.
She said that the same amount of money was enough to shop for a week's veges supply for her family of five people before the recent floods.
The recent back to back tropical cyclones Josie and Keni have affected the lives of Fijian farmers and would in turn affect the family's diet and health in the long run, she said.