Life is art in its entirety. From the way we dress to how our gait down to eating, all is, but not as much as raising a child, for it is here that parents give their all. And when it comes to weaning a child, you wouldn’t want to fail in even in the minutest of detail of this art.

Traditionally, corn flour porridge with mashed potatoes, cassava porridge with pounded steamed cassava pieces for lunch or just anything that can be mashed and imbibed by a baby’s tender gums and mouth palate is food.

Of course, these combinations will satisfy the child, thus yielding more assurance for most rural mothers to go forth with the diets each day.

However, the weaning period during a child’s development is not one where we ought to take chances. It is a nutritionally sensitive and could be costly when one fails to offer the right quality of food. Risks of nutritional rehabilitation amid several complications mainly from protein energy malnutrition such as oedema, skin lesions and stunting abound.

According to Joseph Uwiragiye, a nutritionist at Central University Teaching Hospital of Kigali (Chuk), when these body changes start, it can take time for mothers to tell the cause.

"Mothers usually fail to realise that their children have deficiencies because when some malnutrition signs like the oedema manifest, the body swells, a thing naïve parents confuse with gaining weight,” Uwiragiye says.

"The possibility of seeking medical attention at the earliest stage will thus be limited.”

Although rehabilitation would be the right approach for an infant undergoing through such malnutrition changes, experts warn that building nutritional capacity within families would be the ultimate solution even after nutritional therapy.

 Since with limited knowledge malnutrition recurrence is possible, besides quantity of weaning diets, mothers should know when, how and what type of foods they ought to introduce to their child.

Because essential nutrition and policy-making could reduce infant and child mortality while also improving physical and mental growth, the World Health Organisation provides guidance on feeding targeting the first 1,000 days in a child life.

Although current research supports the benefit of exclusive breastfeeding until six months, this can only benefit a healthy growing infant with normal birth weight, experts say.

Infants have different needs and they should be managed independently.

What constitutes a healthy weaning diet?

During weaning, all mothers should start with the liquid diet while gradually introducing the solid foods.

"A balanced diet should be maintained during the whole weaning processes. Several foods such as enriched porridge, mashed cooked vegetables such as carrot, pureed banana, papaya and natural juice are good for the baby,” Uwiragiye says.

Once the baby is used to eating vegetables and fruits, other foods can be added, such as puréed or mashed meat, fish, chicken, mashed rice, potatoes, banana, beans, peas, dairy products and formula milk.

However, during this stage, a mother should avoid adding condiments in meals for children. Sugar and salt should only be used in moderate quantities.

This is because sugar can encourage a sweet tooth and lead to tooth decay when milk teeth start coming.

Instead mashed banana, breast or formula milk can be used to sweeten food if necessary.

These interventions should be emphasised at family level if malnutrition is to decline.

The cost of malnutrition is borne mainly by the family with a 74 per cent contribution to the burden with an effect on education, including 327,500 children repeating a class, says a recent report titled, "Cost of Hunger Study in Rwanda.”

With 13 per cent of this figure being associated with stunting, most families put the blame of poorly feeding their infants on limited resources.

Health experts, however, disregard this since cheap foods on local stands can offer the same purpose.

For example, a mixture of potatoes or Irish potatoes, powdered silver fish, vegetables, mashed beans or boiled eggyork is almost affordable to all.

Dr Salamon Sindayiheba, a clinical director at Rutongo Hospital, acknowledges the interventions, saying for every case of malnutrition received, they have to find out whether the cause is poverty or poor nutrition knowledge.

"With poverty, we  partner with sector authorities to help the family get land to farm or a job so they can fight poverty while also bringing on board our health experts to try give as much proper nutrition advice to the family,” Dr Sindayiheba says.

He says at least twice a month, a midwife, general medical doctor and supervisor, is sent out to coach health centre staff in line with baby delivery techniques, management of newborn, and use of certain delivery tools.

Sindayiheba also cautions families against the use of herbs when their children get ill.

"Women should take the lead in fostering their health and that of children since men have exhibited limited participation,” he says.