Recognising the importance of nutrition, the world in 2015 signed up to end hunger and malnutrition through Sustainable Development Goals.<\/p>\n
To support this endeavour, CARE International and Graca Machel Trust have produced a new report covering nine countries in Eastern and Southern Africa highlighting the low levels of government funding to nutrition. <\/p>\n
Given nutrition\u2019s critical role in development, the success of the SDGs as a whole is contingent on ending malnutrition. It is therefore imperative that all nine countries (Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) and Africa at large, address malnutrition with renewed vigour, starting with committing at least 3% of their national budget to nutrition, as the report recommends.<\/p>\n
The Lancet Maternal and Child Nutrition Series 2013 proposes a package of ten proven, low-cost nutrition interventions that are designed to specifically address undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in women of reproductive age, pregnant women, neonates, infants, and children. These include some critical interventions focused on the 1,000 days period between conception and a child\u2019s second birthday, such as nutrient supplementation before, during, and after pregnancy, breastfeeding (including early initiation, exclusive breastfeeding for six months, and continued breastfeeding), complementary feeding, and management of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and moderate acute malnutrition. <\/p>\n
In addition to these, there are a range of other interventions that need to take place to make other sectors such as agriculture, health, water, sanitation, hygiene, etc\u2026 sensitive to good nutrition outcomes.<\/p>\n
Overall, there are proven interventions that can effectively address malnutrition, but they need significant resources, given the scale of the challenge. Across, the nine countries alone, a total of 14.8 million children are stunted. Yet, as the report reveals, countries are still budgeting relatively little for nutrition interventions. The average national budget allocation to nutrition is 0.45%, which is far too little to accelerate progress to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. <\/p>\n
Governments can and must do more to end malnutrition and secure the region\u2019s development, now and into the future. An additional 3% of government budgets is needed to accelerate stunting reduction.<\/p>\n
{{Authors: }} Rachel Toku-Appiah, {Nutrition Program Manager, Gra\u00e7a Machel Trust }
\nReginald Ntomba, {Nutrition Hub Coordinator, CARE International Zambia }
\nMuhamyankaka Venuste, {Executive Director-SUN Alliance Rwanda}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is now ample evidence that good nutrition is crucial for human development and hence overall national development. Regionally, the cost of malnutrition has been well documented in various studies, among them the Cost of Hunger studies led by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the New Partnership of Africa\u2019s Development (NEPAD), with support from the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the UN World Food Programme (WFP). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[75],"byline":[2927],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-38059","opinion","type-opinion","status-publish","hentry","category-opinions","tag-homenews","byline-sunalliance"],"bylines":[{"id":2927,"name":"SunAlliance","slug":"sunalliance","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2927,"name":"SunAlliance","slug":"sunalliance","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/38059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/opinion"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/38059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38059"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=38059"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=38059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}