Malnutrition jeopardizes Asia’s tremendous economic potential – UN

With the greatest number of hungry people in the world living in Asia, the region must take decisive steps to reduce malnutrition or risk losing much of its tremendous economic potential, a top official of the United Nations emergency feeding agency said today.

“Malnutrition will be a millstone around the neck of the countries in their progress toward economic prosperity,” World Food Programme (WFP) Deputy Executive Director Sheila Sisulu told the opening session of a regional conference on maternal and child malnutrition in New Delhi.

“It is vital for everyone to play their part in making sure women and children, particularly adolescent girls, get proper nourishment,” she added, noting that Asia’s catastrophic malnutrition levels are the single greatest barrier to the evolution of a modern, knowledge-based work force that can manage the economic powerhouse it has the promise to become.

WFP and the Indian Government are co-hosting the three-day conference – the Regional Ministerial Consultation on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Asian Countries – which focuses on food and nutrition as a top priority in poverty-reduction strategies.

Ms. Sisulu explained that a mother weakened by iron and vitamin A deficiency cannot give her children the upbringing needed to complete their education and achieve their full social and economic potential. As the primary caregiver of the family, a mother needs essential micronutrients in order to do her job well.

It is also crucial for infants and young children to get good nutrition at this vital stage of their development, she said, pointing out that malnutrition in early childhood undermines children’s physical stature and cognitive abilities and impedes their performance in school. Undernourished adolescent girls bear underweight babies, who then continue the insidious cycle of malnutrition into the next generation. “Adolescent girls are the vital link in the chain to the future of Asia,” she declared.

Noting that fortified foods can be made available at affordable prices for the poor, like Indiamix, the low-cost blended infant food pioneered in India by WFP, she urged countries with a nutrition crisis to increase the fortification of staple foodstuffs lacking micronutrients, so that the poor get the necessary vitamins and minerals.

According to UN statistics, more than 500 million Asians do not get enough food to meet daily needs for nutritional well-being. Micronutrient deficiencies are especially serious: babies are born mentally retarded as a result of iodine deficiency, children go blind and die of vitamin A deficiency, and enormous numbers of women and children are sapped by iron deficiency anaemia. At the same time, World Bank studies show that productivity losses due to various types of malnutrition in low-income Asian countries constitute about two to three percent of the Gross National Product (and eight per cent in Bangladesh).