Millions malnourished, obese in nutrition crisis

Over 155 mn kids stunted

LONDON, Nov 5, (Agencies): Almost every country in the world now has serious nutrition problems, either due to over-eating leading to obesity or a lack of food leading to undernutrition, according to a major study published on Saturday.

Researchers behind the Global Nutrition Report, which looked at 140 countries, said the problems were “putting the brakes on human development as a whole” and called for a critical change in the response to this global health threat.

The report found that while malnutrition rates are falling globally, their rate of decrease is not fast enough to meet the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

More than 155 million children aged under five are stunted due to lack of nutrition, and 52 million are defined as “wasted” - meaning they do not weigh enough for their height, the report said.

At the other end of the spectrum, over-eating is taking a heavy toll on people of all ages worldwide: the report found that two billion of the world’s seven billion people are now overweight or obese.

In North America, a third of all men and women are obese.

Worldwide, at least 41 million children under five are overweight, and in Africa alone, some 10 million children are now classified as overweight.

Disease

“Historically, maternal anaemia and child undernutrition have been seen as separate problems to obesity and non-communicable diseases,” said Jessica Fanzo, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States who co-led the Global Nutrition Report.

“The reality is they are intimately connected and driven by inequalities everywhere in the world. That’s why governments ... need to tackle them holistically, not as distinct problems.”

Donor funding for nutrition rose by just 2 percent to $867 million in 2015, the report found. It said funding needs to be “turbo charged” and called for a tripling of global investment in nutrition to $70 billion over 10 years.

The Global Nutrition Report is an independently produced annual analysis of the state of the world’s nutrition. It tracks progress on targets for maternal, infant and young child nutrition and on diet-related chronic diseases adopted by World Health Organization member states.

The only woman to have been the first lady of two countries said Saturday during an international nutrition summit held in Italy that a major challenge in making the eradication of malnutrition a global priority is that the problem “is a hidden pandemic.”

“It is not visible in daily life,” Graca Machel, a campaigner for the rights of women and girls and the widow of both Mozambican President Samora Machel and South African President Nelson Mandela, said at the meeting in Milan.

Organizers of the summit announced $640 million in new commitments to tackle global malnutrition, bringing pledges over the next decade to $3.4 billion. The meeting brought together national government representatives, foundations and non-governmental agencies.

The funds go toward a range of programs that support the United Nations’ goals of zero hunger and malnutrition by 2030 and targets the World Health Organization has set for 2025 — reducing stunted growth in children under the age of 5 by 40 percent and reducing anemia in women of childbearing age by 50 percent.

Still, the sum collected under the summit auspices can be seen as just a down payment on the $3.7 billion a year the World Bank says is needed to make progress toward the global targets.

Impairments

Malnutrition is an underlying cause of half of child deaths worldwide, according to a report commissioned for the meeting and based on data from UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank. Some 155 million children globally suffer physical and cognitive impairments from being malnourished, the report said,

Still, Machel says progress is being made.

“For many years, nutrition was seen as something which belonged to health. Now, it is being viewed at the center of development” and moving up as a governmental priority, she said.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan concurred.