Guest blog posted by Jane Badham, a freelance nutrition consultant who works amongst others with Sight and Life (www.sightandlife.org) and with GAIN (www.gainhealth.org)
It is not easy to sit in the comfort of my office with a full stomach and write this blog as my mind is flooded with the tragic images we are seeing in the media and across the social networks of the suffering and death in the Horn of Africa due to what is being described as the greatest humanitarian crisis that the world has even known. The pictures show people, like a line of ants, walking across a dustbowl, in the hope of finding help, of finding food. We hear endless stories of those who have walked weeks to escape the ‘famine zone’ and who have had not one but numerous family members die en route. Yet this crisis hasn’t garnered the same rapid response and outpouring that we see when there is a tsunami or earthquake – it almost passed us by (I recognize that the big-picture situation is more complex than I am illustrating), but only when the images were reminiscent of the 1985 Ethiopian starvation horrors, did the world seem to wake up and declare what is happening as intolerable.
Sadly this famine occurs at a time when globally, food and nutrition security, is gaining the dominance it deserves on the development agenda (think of the 1000 Days www.thousanddays.org and Scaling-Up Nutrition SUN www.scalingupnutrition.org movements), making it an even greater indictment on us all. It shows how much of the discussion about malnutrition has become technical. Famine should be declared when 30% of children are acutely malnourished, 20% of the populationis without food, and deaths are running at two per 10,000 adults or four per 10,000 children everyday. We forget that each death has a face and a family. The figures show that in areas of Somalia, almost a third of the total population, are acutely malnourished and some 2.8 million of ourfellow humans are in need of immediate life-saving assistance. Some 10.8 million are estimated to be affected. Likewise we also have a definition for hidden hunger - micronutrient (vitamin andmineral) deficiency in a person’s diet, rather than malnutrition as classically presented as the hungry or starving individual, but malnutrition as it should properly be defined: poor overall quality of nutrition. The estimates are that some 2 billion people suffer from hidden hunger. These individuals may eat enough calories to live, but have a basic diet that fails to provide sufficient levels of crucial vitamins and minerals that allows them to be mentally and physically healthy. These individuals also have faces and families…
Both starvation as we are seeing it in the news today and hidden hunger, that is a major barrier toreaching the Millennium Development Goals, have to be addressed. Addressed through action and not more talk. Key is the need for real political will and commitment, which many agree is lacking in many of the most affected countries. That is why SUN specifically calls itself a movement and David Nabarro, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on Food Security and Nutrition, who is leading the movement is unequivocal when he writes “SUN is not a new institution, initiativeor financial mechanism. Instead it is a movement that brings organizations together to support national plans to scale up nutrition. It helps ensure that financial and technical resources areaccessible, coordinated, predictable and ready to go to scale. The main investors in SUN are national governments themselves.”
And just as governments have to show willing and be committed and be held accountable, the time has come for those of us working in nutrition, agriculture and development, to break down the silos in which we have traditionally functioned and to build meaningful partnerships across multiple
cross-cutting disciplines. We need direct nutrition interventions such as the promotion of ante-natal nutrition and exclusive breastfeeding as well as improved complementary feeding, food fortification and public-private partnerships that deliver affordable nutritious options to the neglected at the bottom of the pyramid. We also need nutrition and gender sensitive investments across agriculture, health, social protection and education.
To be inspired visit www.girleffect.org and www.halftheskymovement.org and listen to Josette Sheeran, head of the World Food Programme, on TED Talks as she discusses ‘Ending hunger now’ (http://blog.ted.com/2011/07/28/ending-hunger-now-josette-sheeran-on-ted-com/).
Ultimately, none of our individual actions directly result in reaching the goal of the prevention of malnutrition in all its forms and ensuring a better life for all through the improved nutritional status of the world’s population. It is the compounded effects of all our actions that lead to a world where this goal becomes possible.
