Donors have spent very little on nutrition – barely 1.7% of development and emergency food aid between 2004 and 2007 actually addressed malnutrition, says this report. The analysis suggests that donors should maximise the value of funding by ceasing in-kind donations and provide cash instead, allowing aid agencies to source cheaper or more appropriate food in the region or beneficiary country. However, donor countries in the European Union (EU) and Canada, which had recently moved to provide cash, were not spending enough on nutrition. Malnutrition should in recent years have benefited both from the global renewed interest in the problem, and from the emergence of a broad consensus within the nutrition community enabling the scale up of activities in high-burden countries. Yet the analysis finds that funding has remained more or less flat, stuck at roughly the same level since 2000–2004. A tiny percentage (1.7%) of the interventions reported as ‘development food aid-food security’ and ‘emergency food aid’ in the OECD database actually address nutrition. The authors argue that if interventions such as these are to be considered as a means to address malnutrition, then food security and food assistance projects (namely food transfer, cash or voucher programmes) must be targeted more precisely on nutrition as a main objective and be designed accordingly.
Poverty and health
Malawi has seen an agricultural revolution in the past decade with the introduction of farmer subsidies. From an importer of maize, Malawi has become an exporter of maize to the rest of the southern, central and eastern African region. In this presentation, the author argues that social protection programmes that focus on enhancing agricultural productivity within small farms can provide a short-term pathway out of poverty.
Maternal and child undernutrition, consisting of stunting, wasting, and deficiencies of essential vitamins and minerals, was the subject of a Series of papers in The Lancet in 2008. In the series, researchers quantified the prevalence of these issues, calculated their short-term and long-term consequences, and estimated their potential for reduction through high and equitable coverage of proven nutrition interventions. Authors of the 2008 series identified the need to focus on the crucial period from conception to a child’s second birthday - the 1,000 days in which good nutrition and healthy growth have lasting benefits throughout life. They also called for greater priority for national nutrition programmes, stronger integration with health programmes, enhanced intersectoral approaches, and more focus and coordination in the global nutrition system of international agencies, external funders, academia, civil society, and the private sector. Five years after the initial series, the the Lancet has re-evaluated the problems of maternal and child undernutrition in this document and also examines the growing problems of overweight and obesity for women and children and their consequences in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Many of these countries are said to have the double burden of malnutrition - continued stunting of growth and deficiencies of essential nutrients along with the emerging issue of obesity. The Lancet also assesses national progress in nutrition programmes and international efforts toward previous recommendations.
In this paper we review the associations between maternal and child undernutrition with human capital and risk of adult diseases in low-income and middle-income countries. We analysed data from five long-standing prospective cohort studies from Brazil, Guatemala, India, the Philippines, and South Africa. We conclude that damage suffered in early life leads to permanent impairment, and might also affect future generations. Its prevention will probably bring about important health, educational, and economic benefits. Chronic diseases are especially common in undernourished children who experience rapid weight gain after infancy.
Maternal and child undernutrition is highly prevalent in low-income and middle-income countries, resulting in substantial increases in mortality and overall disease burden. This paper presents new analyses to estimate the effects of the risks related to measures of undernutrition, as well as to suboptimum breastfeeding practices on mortality and disease. The high mortality and disease burden resulting from these nutrition-related factors make a compelling case for the urgent implementation of interventions to reduce their occurrence or ameliorate their consequences.
In Uganda 13% of persons have at least one form of disability. This study explores the maternal and newborn health related needs of women with walking disabilities in Kibuku District Uganda. A qualitative study was carried out in September 2017 in three sub-counties of Kibuku district. Four In-depth Interviews among purposively selected women who had walking disabilities and who had given birth within two years from the study date were conducted. The thematic areas explored during analysis included psychosocial, mobility, health facility and personal needs of women with walking disabilities. Data was analyzed manually using framework analysis. The authors found that women with walking disabilities had psychosocial, mobility, special services and personal needs. Psychosocial needs included, partners, communities, families’ and health workers’ acceptance. Mobility needs were associated with transport unsuitability, difficulty in finding transport and high cost of transport. Health facility needs included; infrastructure and responsive health services needs while personal maternal and newborn health needs were; personal protective wear, basic needs and birth preparedness items. Communities, and health workers need to be sensitized on these needs to meet them.
In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between maternal depression and child growth in developing countries through a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Seventeen studies were included, with a total of 13,923 mother-and-child pairs from 11 countries. The authors found that children of mothers with depression or depressive symptoms were more likely to be underweight or stunted. The selected studies indicated that if the infant population were entirely unexposed to maternal depressive symptoms, 23% to 29% fewer children would be underweight or stunted. The authors call for rigorous prospective studies to identify mechanisms and causes. Early identification, treatment and prevention of maternal depression may help reduce child stunting and underweight in developing countries.
According to this draft comprehensive implementation plan, the World Health Organisation acknowledges that nutrition challenges are multi-faceted, effective nutrition actions exist but are not expanded sufficiently and new initiatives have been launched to address nutrition, such as the Scaling Up nutrition movement. The plan sets five global targets and a time frame. The plan aims to alleviate the double burden of malnutrition in children, starting from the earliest stages in development. It contains five key actions. 1. To create a supportive environment for the implementation of comprehensive food and nutrition policies. 2. To include all required effective health interventions with an impact on nutrition in national nutrition pans. 3. To stimulate development policies and programmes outside the health sector that recognise and include nutrition. 4. To provide sufficient financial resources and staff for the implementation of nutrition interventions, 5. To monitor and evaluate the implementation of policies and programmes.
In their new report, ActionAid estimates that, if all global biofuel targets are met, global food prices could rise by up to an additional 76% by 2020, causing an estimated 600 million extra people to go hungry. The report indicates that industrial biofuels are having disastrous local impacts on food security and land rights in many of the communities where they are grown. The scale of the current land grab has escalated in Africa – in just five African countries, 1.1 million hectares have been given over to industrial biofuels – an area the size of Belgium. Also, many industrial biofuels do not have lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuels. The report puts forward a number of recommendations: placing a moratorium on the further expansion of industrial biofuel production and investment; ensuring that member states do not lock-in industrial biofuels to their 2010 national action plans; ending targets and financial incentives for industrial biofuels; and supporting small-scale sustainable biofuels in the European Union and abroad.
The extent to which growth reduces global poverty has been disputed for 30 years. It is possible for consumption of the poor to grow less rapidly than national consumption, without any increase in measured inequality. Current statistical procedures in poor countries understate the rate of global poverty reduction, and overstate growth in the world, argues this research paper.