Pulling Undernutrition From Its Roots
If we’re serious about ending poverty, then we have to get serious about improving nutrition. Nutrition is like the DNA of health and development. At an individual level, nutrition affects virtually every aspect of a human being’s physical and intellectual development. At a global level, how well (or poorly) people are nourished affects the overall health, prosperity and stability of communities and societies.
Yet ironically, poor nutrition, specifically undernutrition, is one of the world’s most insidious, yet least addressed, health and development challenges. It is responsible for more than one-third of all deaths of children under the age of 5 and keeps families, communities and countries locked in a cycle of poverty.
Undernutrition — a condition in which the body does not get the nutrients it needs to sustain healthy growth and development — has largely been an “invisible” problem. Many of those affected by it often do not show the physical or clinical symptoms usually associated with extreme hunger or malnutrition. Addressing undernutrition also requires action in a variety of sectors including agriculture, maternal and child health, water and sanitation and social protection, which can be complex and difficult to coordinate. In countries where gender inequality is great, there are often high rates of undernutrition as female members of a household will “eat least and last.” Undernourished girls grow up to become undernourished mothers who in turn are more likely to give birth to undernourished babies, contributing to a multigenerational cycle of undernutrition. To compound the problem further, funding for nutrition over the past decade has amounted to an estimated $350 to $500 million annually out of $11 billion that the World Bank estimates is required to adequately combat undernutrition.
But undernutrition is not just another global development issue; in many ways, it is the foundational global development issue.
In order to tackle the problem of undernutrition effectively, we have to start at the beginning. Literally. It is early in life — from the time a baby is in his mother’s womb until his 2nd birthday — when undernutrition poses the greatest threat to long-term health and economic development. The damage to babies’ brains and bodies caused by poor nutrition during this critical 1,000 day window from pregnancy to age two is irreversible. This has profound consequences for both individuals and societies. Poor nutrition early in life can make a person more susceptible to infection and chronic disease, significantly increasing the human and economic burden of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. It can impair cognitive development in such a way that it leads to lower educational performance and reduces an individual’s earning potential by more than 10 percent over his or her lifetime. Taken together, the health and development impact of early undernutrition is significant — it costs not only lives, but it also costs countries at least 2 to 3 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP).
Though the greatest threat posed by undernutrition is in the 1,000 day window, so is the greatest opportunity to prevent and treat the problem. Data shows that the right nutrition in the 1,000 days between pregnancy and age two can have a lifelong impact on a child’s ability to live a healthy and prosperous life. Building on the evidence outlined in the Lancet’s landmark series on maternal and child nutrition, the World Bank outlined a set of highly cost-effective nutrition interventions targeting the 1,000 day window. Broadly speaking, these interventions focus on three areas: promoting good nutritional and baby-friendly practices, increasing the intake of vitamins and minerals for both mom and baby, and promoting therapeutic feeding for malnourished children with special foods. It is estimated that implementing these solutions at scale could save the lives of 1 million children per year.
The role that nutrition plays in perpetuating disease and poverty cannot be overstated. Leading economists and health experts agree that improving nutrition, particularly in the 1,000 day window, is one of the best investments the world can make to achieve lasting progress in global health and development.
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Lucy Sullivan, director of 1,000 Days, explains how we can break the cycle of undernutrition - by preventing it from happening at birth. Originally posted on the ONE Campaign's blog.
