The challenge of malnutrition
Malnutrition is a major challenge to human and economic development. It is estimated that around 925 million people globally face hunger and are unable to get enough food while one billion people do not get enough vitamins and minerals.
Almost one in three of the world’s poorest children cannot reach their full potential due to undernutrition and a third of all child deaths are linked to malnutrition. Children under five years of age are worst affected, with around 171 million being chronically malnourished because of poor diet and repeated infections.
Children need enough nutrients in the critical 1,000 days during their early development, otherwise their brains and bodies do not develop properly and they will become stunted. Stunted children are less healthy, physically less able than their peers, may do less well at school and go on to earn less as adults.
Mothers who are stunted themselves, or undernourished at the time of conception and during pregnancy, are more likely to have small babies. Twenty million low-birth weight babies are born each year and they are more susceptible to infections and at greater risk of dying. This helps to explain why poor nutrition is passed between generations.
Approaches to nutrition
By the age of two, the damage done by poor nutrition is mostly irreversible. That is why the UK focuses its nutrition programmeson the first ‘1,000 days’, from the start of pregnancy to a child’s second birthday – ensuring that mother and child get the right food and vitamins they need for a healthy and active life.
The UK government has two approaches:
- We support nutrition-specific programmes: a package of interventions, which for example, may provide nutrition counselling to pregnant and breastfeeding women, and vitamin A supplements to children under five and adolescent girls.
- We also support nutrition sensitive programmes, which indirectly help improve poor people's diets such as by providing small amounts of money and skills training so that families can increase their household income and access to food and education. Other nutrition sensitive programmes include the roll-out of new nutritionally enriched crops such as vitamin A enriched orange fleshed sweet potato or foods which people eat everyday such as vitamin enriched cooking oil.
The UK Government is building partnerships in countries, internationally, and with the private sector to increase global efforts to tackle malnutrition in the critical ‘1,000 day window’. As part of this effort, the UK is supporting the global ‘Scaling Up Nutrition’ (SUN) movement, which includes 28 developing countries committed to taking action to tackle malnutrition.
On the ground, DFID is working with governments and civil society organisations to get nutrition services to pregnant women and children under five years of age.
In India we will focus our support in three of the poorest Indian states which, together, are home to 13 million stunted children. Resources will be invested in health, nutrition and water and sanitation services to ensure that undernourished children and their families get all the services they need to make them grow well and be healthy.
In Zambia, for example, we are supporting innovative ways to expand the provision of oral rehydration sachets and zinc supplements for the treatment of acute diarrhoea in remote rural areas by using Coca Cola distribution channels.
As part of the UK's efforts to help build an effective global response to tackle undernutrition, DFID is supporting the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to develop a short e-learning course called ‘Programming for Nutrition Outcomes’. The first four sessions are available now here. The full course will be launched in autumn 2012 as an Open Educational Resource.
Scaling Up Nutrition
Our position paper, "Scaling Up Nutrition: The UK’s position paper on undernutrition", sets out how we will scale up our nutrition programmes to reach 20 million children under the age of five, through our support to nutrition-related programmes, in addition to our humanitarian aid, over the next four years.
We will do this through:
- Reaching more adolescent girls and pregnant women and children under the age of five years with nutrition specific interventions
- Delivering greater impact through programmes across multiple sectors (“nutrition-sensitive development”)
- Building a more effective international response
Our new nutrition paper An update of The neglected Crisis of Undernutrition: Evidence for Action (2012) reviews new research on the causes, consequences and potential actions to reduce maternal and child undernutrition undertaken since its original publication in 2009. The paper will help the UK develop more effective nutrition programmes to reach 20 million pregnant women and children under the age of five in developing countries.