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FINAL 03/29/2012 Investing in nutrition security is a key to sustainable development Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director ___________________________________________________________________________ The condition known as stunting the irreversible result of chronic nutritional deprivation during the most critical phase of child development may be among the least understood and least prioritized issues in development today. It represents a huge moral and practical challenge. It is also one of the greatest opportunities G8 nations have to help children and developing nations reach their potential. ___________________________________________________________________________ The news that hundreds of millions of children are at risk of death, of a life shorter than their peers, of poorer cognitive capacity and, thus, less ability to learn in school and earn as adults should command headlines and compel immediate action.

And yet, the condition that affects these children stunting is still relatively unknown, even among many development professionals, health and education ministers, and even medical practitioners.

Stunting is the irreversible outcome of chronic nutritional deficiency during the first thousand days of a childs life from conception, through pregnancy, to the age of two. The damage it causes to a childs development is permanent -- and the cumulative effect it can have on a countrys development is also considerable.

Stunted children are inches shorter than they could have been. Their immune systems are weaker, leaving them more vulnerable to disease. A stunted child is up to five times more likely than a non-stunted child to die from diarrhoea which kills over 3,000 children under five every day.

And stunting affects far more than the body; it inalterably affects the development of the brain. If you compare the brain cells of a well-nourished child with those of a stunted child, the difference is apparent even to an untrained eye.

These deficits in brain cell size and connectivity translate to a loss of between two to three years of learning. Later in life, when stunted children enter the work force, their diminished physical and cognitive development can reduce their earning capacity by as much as 22 per cent.

In dozens of countries, up to 30 and 40 per cent of the child population suffer from stunting. In six countries, over 50 per cent suffer from this condition -- for example,

Afghanistan, where 59 per cent of children under five are stunted.

And the burden of stunting is not restricted to either poor or food-insecure countries. In India, a middle income, food-secure country, nearly half of all children under the age of five are stunted.

While widespread in middle as well as lower income countries, stunting is among the most glaring inequities in the world, most affecting the poorest children in their societies, who are three times as likely as the richest children to be stunted.

Stunting is so common that in some places it is mistaken for genetic heritage. It is not. But, while not hereditary, stunted women are more likely to give birth to stunted children as a result of their own nutritional deprivation. This passes the tragedy of stunting from generation to generation and helps perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

180 million children under the age of five around the world suffer from this terrible affliction. The full measure of their loss cannot be calculated. And the short and long term economic costs of this silent emergency cannot be ignored.

The World Bank estimates that countries blighted by stunting and other consequences of under-nutrition lose at least two to three per cent of their gross domestic product, as well as billions of dollars in forgone productivity and avoidable health care spending.

The good news is that we know how to combat stunting for example, by providing extra micronutrients like vitamin A, zinc, iron and iodine. These are all easy to deliver and highly effective. They are also highly cost-effective. As, of course, is breast-feeding.

In 2008, eight of the worlds leading economists, including five Nobel Laureates, in the so-called Copenhagen Consensus, recommended priorities for confronting the top ten global challenges. They ranked providing young children with micronutrients the number one most cost-effective way to advance global welfare.

Delivered together with efforts designed to promote exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of a childs life, and to improve infant feeding practices, these interventions can prevent stunting and potentially change the course of a childs life.

These strategies are working.

Around the developing world, stunting prevalence

dropped from 40 per cent in 1990 to 29 per cent in 2008. This is encouraging, but by no means enough. It was not enough to save the 180 million children under-five who suffer from stunting today. And it will not be enough to prevent hundreds of millions of other children from becoming stunted. We need to do more.

The time has come to recognize nutritional status not only as a marker of progress in development, but also as a maker of progress and a key to more sustainable development. Governments must invest now in programmes to prevent stunting or risk diminishing the impact of other investments in education, health, and child protection.

To accelerate global progress on nutrition, we have needed a movement, driven by the nations who bear the greatest burdens of stunting, supported by governments, international agencies, civil society, academia, and the private sector, and made possible by communities themselves a shared commitment by all to combat this terrible condition.

And we have that movement: the Scaling Up Nutrition, or SUN, movement. SUN was established in 2010 to accelerate global progress on under-nutrition, especially stunting and acute malnutrition. It has already brought together more than 100 partners jointly

working to encourage, coordinate, and improve the effectiveness of support for countries who have pledged to put nutrition at the center of their national agendas.

Already leaders in 26 developing nations have joined SUN. These early risers are reviewing their policies and programmes through the lens of improving nutrition. Some are already reviewing their budgets to increase allocations for nutrition programmes. soon to see direct results, but the early signs are promising. It is too

Momentum is growing and we must build on it.

To start, leading nations should allocate a larger percentage of their development budgets to support pro-nutrition programmes and interventions, with special attention for the most disadvantaged. These include: expanding delivery of micronutrients, promoting

exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months after birth, and improving child feeding practices.

They also include community-based efforts to improve water, sanitation, and hygiene, and to treat common infectious diseases, like diarrhoea -- the second largest cause of underfive mortality. More than 80% of all diarrheal diseases in children are caused by fecal contamination. Just as stunting increases a childs risk of dying from diarrhoea, diarrhoea

inhibits the absorption of critical nutrients, increasing the chances of stunting.

Together, governments, international agencies and NGOs should improve their collective ability to implement, as well as monitor, the results these programmes are achieving, identify the barriers to progress, and better coordinate our efforts to overcome them. This, in turn, maximizes the effectiveness of aid dollars and budget allocations at a time when economic adversity makes every dollar count more than ever.

In addition, even though we must recognize the difference between food security and nutrition security, we must also strengthen the policy and programme linkages in efforts to achieve both.

For example, supporting small-scale farming in developing nations is an important element of an overall policy to increase food security. But governments can do more than enable small-scale farmers to buy seed and fertilizer. They can also advocate for greater diversity in agricultural products more nutritious crops, a greater variety of vegetables, more plentiful sources of protein, and more production of staples like vegetable oil.

Finally, more nations should join the growing SUN movement.

Four nations

(Canada, France, the USA, and the UK) out of the Group of 8 belong to SUN. The G8 can send a strong signal about its commitment to sustainable development by making its membership in SUN unanimous and in doing so, encourage others to follow.

Together, we can make nutrition a global priority -- and stunting a thing of the past. This is a cost-effective opportunity for a big global development win -- an opportunity we cannot afford to lose.

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