Daily Times

Nutrition plays a central role in the socio-economic development of a country. It is therefore included as one of the essential components of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and primary health care (PHC).Ban Ki-moon, United Nations 8th Secretary General, in a message for the SUN Movement Strategy and Roadmap 2016-2020, said that” Nutrition is both a maker and a marker of development. Improved nutrition is the platform for progress in health, education, employment, empowerment of women and the reduction of poverty and inequality, and can lay the foundation for peaceful, secure and stable societies”.

Adequate nutrition is required to have proper body functions for healthy and productive life. A balanced diet comprising of six essential nutrients: macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein & fats); micronutrients (vitamins and minerals); and water in appropriate combinations meet daily requirements of nourishment. A more nourished world is a better world and so, significant steps were taken by world nutritional champions for improving global nutrition and associated health burdens.

Motion around nutrition has been increasingly building over the last decade:

n In 2012 the World Health Assembly approved the 2025 Global Targets for Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition.

n In 2013 it went on to adopt targets for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including those relevant to nutrition. In the same year, at the first Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit, donors committed US$23 billion to activities to improve nutrition.

n Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) held in 2014 and with the recent naming of 2016-2025 as the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition, more and more people have begun to identify the importance of addressing malnutrition in all its forms.

n In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals preserved the objective of “ending all forms of malnutrition,” stimulating the world to think and to focus on all its faces and work to end it, for all people, by 2030.

n 2016 brought major opportunities to interpret this pledge into action. These opportunities include countries’ adoption of their own targets related to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Despite all these efforts, Global Nutrition Report 2017 shows what large-scale and universal problem nutrition still is. According to this report 88% of countries face a serious burden of either two or three forms of malnutrition (childhood stunting, anemia in women of reproductive age and/or overweight in adult women).

A lot needs to be done to address causes of malnutrition and its serious social and economic consequences. Malnutrition and diet are considered largest risk factors responsible for the global burden of diseases seriously affecting the economic growth. This problem may hinder the successful achievement of the SDGs since 12 of the 17 Goals of SDGs are highly relevant to nutrition. More energetic efforts need to be made for stronger political involvement at national and international level. This may involve substantial financial support and commitments by policy makers.

Malnutrition is a major public health problem throughout the developing world, particularly in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Malnutrition is not a single problem, but rather a group, or a system, of related problems. This group is highly multifarious in developing countries and exhibit enormous diversity. Foods available to populations in these regions are often deficient in macronutrients (leading to protein-energy malnutrition), micronutrients (leading to specific micronutrient deficiencies) or both. Hence In these communities, a high incidence of poor diet and infectious disease regularly unites into a vicious circle. Malnutrition is a threat associated with millions of deaths annually, primarily of infants and children, about one third of such deaths in developing countries. According to report by UN global assessment on food security and nutrition published September 2017 some 155 million children aged under five are stunted (too short for their age), while 52 million suffer from wasting, meaning their weight is too low for their height. Overall malnutrition represents the single largest killer of children under-five years of age.

Improvements in health and nutrition in developing countries may change this scenario by specific, measured, health- and nutrition-related interventions and by changing the underlying social, economic, and health environments. Researches have shown that the costs of malnutrition are very high, both in terms of deaths (child and maternal) and in terms of lost economic productivity.

In addition, it is critical to address the core causes of malnutrition, which are rooted in the household and community level settings. This range from improving food security to enhancing the status of women; from guaranteeing access to clean water, sanitation and health services to improved education; from improving childcare practices to reinforcing social protection.

Lastly, nutrition is many things. It has a mutual relationship with health, economic development, social developments, and political system of the country. It is important to raise the awareness that economic development and the nutritional status of populations are complexly linked. Nutritional sufficiency affects the quality of human capital and influences economic performance. On the other hand, the extent and form of economic development conditions the nutritional status of the population. This realization will make it easier for the stakeholders to re-enforce the struggles and efforts for implementation of intervention schemes that have been planned and implemented in almost every country in
the world.

When we see malnourished people around us, and then look at ourselves as being people who have basic necessities, I think one has to be very insensitive and tough not to feel that we need to do something.

Malnutritionis a serious problem that affects many countries in the world, especially developing countries. Each one of us needs to ask this question, that how can we contribute to solve this problem?

Published in Daily Times, March 28^th 2018.