PHA-Exchange> A Funding Call for Nutrition

[Claudio]

From: "Leela McCullough" <leela at healthnet.org>
> A Funding Call for Nutrition
> ----------------------------
> 
>  From ProNutrition-HIV <pronut-hiv at healthnet.org>
> 
> A Funding Call for Nutrition
> http://www.worldbank.org
> 
> Report: Repositioning Nutrition (5 MB PDF)
> 
> A new report calls for more funding to combat nutrition, but
> warns efforts should be targeted to pregnant women and children
> under two. It warns that trying to improve nutrition in children
> later in life is too late, too expensive and ineffective.
> 
> March 2, 2006*A new World Bank report warns unless action is
> taken within the first two years of a child's life to improve
> nutrition, children will suffer irreparable damage, ultimately
> adversely affecting the country's economic growth.
> 
> The report, Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development ,
> says malnutrition remains the world's most serious health prob-
> lem. Poor nutrition is implicated in more than half of all child
> deaths worldwide a proportion unmatched by any infectious dis-
> ease since the Black Death.
> 
> "Malnutrition is among the most serious health problems in the
> world today that has not been tackled", says Meera Shekar, the
> report's lead author. "Roughly 30% of children in the world are
> undernourished and in fact 60% of children for example who die
> of common diseases like malaria and diarrhea would not have died
> had not they not been malnourished in the first place".
> 
> While criticizing the lack of large scale action internationally
> and within countries to tackle malnutrition, the report says im-
> proving nutrition could add two to three percent to the growth
> rates of poor countries.
> 
> And contrary to popular belief, it reveals the rates of malnu-
> trition in South Asia are almost double those in Sub-Saharan Af-
> rica.
> 
> "We find the problem is much more severe in South Asia, than in
> Sub-Saharan Africa. Roughly 50 percent of children in South
> Asia are undernourished as compared to about 25 percent in Sub-
> Saharan Africa. But we also find that the problem is not limited
> to those two regions alone. There are countries in other regions
> Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guatemala and Peru where the prob-
> lem is acute as well."
> 
> Not Just a Problem for the Poor
> 
> The report dispels the notion that malnutrition is simply a
> problem for the world's poor countries.
> 
> "Poor nutrition also exists elsewhere, thus suggesting it's not
> simply a question of access to food," Shekar says. "India and
> Ethiopia have about the same levels of malnutrition. And 26 per-
> cent of children in the highest income bracket in India are un-
> derweight and 65 percent are anaemic".
> 
> "Anemic children perform less well in school, are more likely to
> drop-out and have lower intellectual and physical productivity
> as adults. Everyone talks about how well India is doing in the
> IT industry *imagine how much better it could do, if 65 percent
> of the richest and 88 percent of the poorest children were not
> anemic!"
> 
> As Shekar says, the developed world also faces the other side of
> malnutrition - obesity.
> 
> "In the developed world, there's the other aspect of malnutri-
> tion that is coming up and that is the overweight agenda. And
> that links very closely to non communicable disease like cardio-
> vascular heart disease, diabetes and cancers."
> 
> Small Window of Opportunity
> 
> Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development also dispels
> the notion that simply putting more food into the mouths of
> children can overcome malnutrition. It says actions targeted to
> older children have little, if any effect on improving nutri-
> tion. The emphasis of any programs to combat nutrition should
> therefore target pregnant women and children under two years of
> age.
> 
> "There is actually a very, very tight window of opportunity
> which is between conception through the first two years of
> life," Shekar says. "If we miss this window, we miss a whole
> generation."
> 
> "This is the time when the damage that happens due to malnutri-
> tion is in fact essentially irreparable damage. So if we had
> only one dollar to invest in improving nutrition that is where
> we would like to focus our actions."
> 
> "Many people assume that feeding children later in life will im-
> prove nutrition. Well, it's too little, too expensive and too
> late to improve nutrition or to improve future productivity."
> 
> Need for a Re-Think
> 
> Shekar says it's now time for the international community to re-
> think the importance it places on the value of nutrition.
> 
> As the report says, "the unequivocal choice now is between con-
> tinuing to fail, as the global community did with HIV/AIDS for
> more than a decade, or to finally put nutrition at the center of
> development so that a wide range of economic and social improve-
> ments that depend on nutrition can be realized."
> 
> Shekar says in the past, the international community has thought
> of nutrition merely as a food consumption issue or a welfare is-
> sue.
> 
> "But the case we are making in this report is that nutrition is
> an investment issue. It is something that can drive economic
> growth rather than riding on the coat-tails of economic growth,
> because children who are well-nourished have been shown to have
> much higher income potential as adults."
> 
> The report makes the point that malnutrition is costing poor
> countries up to three percent of their yearly GDP. And with the
> economies of many developing countries growing at a rate of two
> to three percent annually, the report says improving nutrition
> could potentially double those rates.
> 
> "I think the biggest challenge now is getting the donor commu-
> nity to rally around this issue * to put resources, both techni-
> cal and financial, behind this issue. And at the same time,
> there's a need to build commitment among government partners as
> well to not only invest in nutrition but invest in the right
> kinds of things for nutrition."
> 
> The report calls on the donor community to co-finance a grant
> fund to jumpstart action in commitment-building and action re-
> search, complementing a recent Bank US $3.6 million grant to
> help mainstream nutrition into maternal and child health pro-
> grams. Concurrently substantive funding is needed for developing
> countries through existing funding channels, to scale-up actions
> to prevent malnutrition.