$30 billion a year to eradicate hunger

At the Rome summit on the global food crisis:
Time for talk over - Action needed

3 June 2008, Rome - Noting that the time for talk was over and that action was urgently needed, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf today appealed to world leaders for US$30 billion a year to re-launch agriculture and avert future threats of conflicts over food.
In an impassioned speech at the opening of the Rome Summit called to de-fuse the current world food crisis, Dr Diouf noted that in 2006 the world spent US$1 200 billion on arms while food wasted in a single country could cost US$100 billion and excess consumption by the world’s obese amounted to US$20 billion.
“Against that backdrop, how can we explain to people of good sense and good faith that it was not possible to find US$30 billion a year to enable 862 million hungry people to enjoy the most fundamental of human rights: the right to food and thus the right to life?” Dr Diouf asked.
“It is resources of this order of magnitude that would make it possible definitely to lay to rest the specter of conflicts over food that are looming on the horizon,” he added.

Increased production in poor countries
“The structural solution to the problem of food security in the world lies in increasing production and productivity in the low-income, food-deficit countries,” he declared.
This called for “innovative and imaginative solutions”, including “partnership agreements ... between countries that have financial resources, management capabilities and technologies and countries that have land, water and human resources”.
The current world food crisis had already had "tragic political and social consequences in different countries” and could further “endanger world peace and security”, Dr Diouf said.
But the crisis was in essence a “chronicle of disaster foretold”, he noted. Despite the World Food Summit’s solemn pledge in 1996 to halve world food hunger by 2015, resources to finance agricultural programmes in developing countries had not only failed to rise but decreased significantly since then.

Anti-hunger programme
Some US$24 billion would have been needed to fund an anti-hunger programme prepared for the second World Food Summit held in 2002, Dr Diouf recalled.
“In cooperation with FAO, the developing countries did in fact prepare policies, strategies and programmes that, if they had received appropriate funding, would have assured world food security,” he said.
But, he continued, “today the facts speak for themselves: from 1980 to 2005 aid to agriculture fell from US$8 billion ( 2004 basis) in 1984 to US$3.4 billion in 2004, representing a reduction in real terms of 58 percent”.
Agriculture’s share of Official Development Assistance (ODA) fell from 17 percent in 1980 to 3 percent in 2006, he also noted.
“Regrettably the international community only reacts when the media beam the distressing spectacle of world suffering into the homes of the wealthy countries,” Dr Diouf commented.

Social, political unrest
The Director-General said he had alerted public opinion as far back as last September to the risks of social and political unrest due to hunger and that in December he had appealed for US$1.7 billion to help overcome the crisis by facilitating the crisis by facilitating farmers'access to seeds, fertilizer, animal feed and other inputs.
But the appeal had generally fallen on deaf ears, despite broad press coverage and correspondence with Member Nations and financial institutions. “It was only when the destitute and those excluded from the abundant tables of the rich took to the streets to voice their discontent and despair that the first reactions in support of food aid began to emerge,” Dr Diouf said.
“Important today is to realize that the time for talking is long past,” he stressed. “Now is the time for action”.
Today there were 862 million people in the world without adequate access to food, the Director-General said. But the current food crisis went beyond the traditional humanitarian dimension because it also affected developed countries, where it fuelled inflation.

Courageous decisions
“If we do not urgently take the courageous decisions that are required in the present circumstances, the restrictive measures taken by producing countries to meet the needs of their populations, the impact of climate change and speculation on futures markets will place the world in a dangerous situation,” Dr Diouf warned.
Sustainable and viable global solutions were needed to narrow the gap between supply and demand, he said. Otherwise “whatever the extent of their financial reserves, some countries might not find food to buy”.
The Director-General noted that contradictions and distortions at international policy level had contributed to the current crisis.
“Nobody understands how a carbon market of US$64 billion can be created in the developed countries but that no funds can be found to prevent the annual deforestation of 13 million hectares,” he said.

Food versus fuel
Also incomprehensible was the fact that subsidies worth US$11-12 billion in 2006 were used to divert 100 million tonnes of cereals from human consumption “mostly to satisfy a thirst for fuels for vehicles”.
Inexplicable too was that in a time of globalization there has been no significant investment in the prevention of a long list of major trans-boundary animal diseases, starting with Newcastle and foot-and-mouth diseases.
But the basic contradiction lay in the fact that OECD countries were distorting world markets, spending US$372 billion in 2006 alone to support their agriculture.
“The problem of food insecurity is a political one, “Dr Diouf concluded. “It is a question of priorities in the face of the most fundamental of human needs. And it those choices made by Governments that determine the allocation of resources.”

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Sec-Gen address to World Food Security Summit

HIGH-LEVEL CONFERENCE ON WORLD FOOD SECURITY: THE CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND BIOENERGY.

ADDRESS BY THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
--
Your Excellency President Giorgio Napolitano, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Heads of State and Government, Your Excellency Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Honourable Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO, Honourable Ministers, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

You all know about the severity and scale of the global food crisis. Before this emergency, more than 850 million people in the world were short of food. The World Bank estimates that this figure could rise by a further 100 million. The poorest of the poor spend two-thirds or more of their income on food. They will be hardest hit.

I have seen this for myself. In Liberia recently, I met people who normally would buy rice by the bag. Today, they buy it by the cup. In Cote d’Ivoire , the leaders of a country recovering from conflict and trying to build a democracy told me how they feared that food riots could undo all their hard work. We fear the same in other countries that, with UN help, have made gains in recent years: Afghanistan , Haiti and Liberia , to name but a few. And let us not forget the millions who suffer in silence and will go hungry unnoticed.

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

The threats are obvious to us all. Yet this crisis also presents us with an opportunity. It is a chance to revisit past policies. While we must respond immediately to high food prices, it is important that our longer term focus is on improving world food security - and remains so for some years

That is why I am so pleased that we are here. I thank Dr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the FAO, for his leadership. The world needs to produce more food. Food production needs to rise by 50% by the year 2030 to meet the rising demand. We have an historic opportunity to revitalize agriculture - especially in countries where productivity gains have been low in recent years.

Governments have already begun to respond. Some countries are helping farmers pay for basic agricultural “inputs,” such as seeds and fertilizers, the price of which has been so significantly affected by the rise in oil prices. We urgently need to find ways to support these initiatives, politically and financially.
That is why last month I set up a High-Level Task Force to come up with a Comprehensive Framework for Action. I want us to have a shared understanding of both the problems and solutions, and to move forward together, with urgency.

I would like to share some of the Task Force's recommendations with you.

First, we must improve vulnerable people's access to food and take immediate steps to increase food availability in their communities.

This includes:

· expanding food assistance through food aid, vouchers or cash;

· scaling up nutritional support and improving safety nets and social protection programmes to help the most vulnerable;

· boosting smallholder farmer food production through an urgent injection of key inputs (including seeds and fertilizers) i n time for this year’s planting seasons;

· improving rural infrastructure and links to markets, and expanding micro-credit programmes;

· adjusting trade and taxation policies to minimize export restrictions and import tariffs, and helping the free flow of agricultural goods;

· skillfully managing the impact of rising food prices on inflation and macro-economic policy;

· supporting balance of payments of net food importing countries where necessary; and

· helping to ensure that short term measures to respond to food price rises are financially sustainable for governments.

To guide us, we must improve food security and nutritional assessment systems, to ensure that we receive early warnings of hardship and are ready to respond.

Some countries have taken action by limiting exports or by imposing price controls. As I have said before, I say again now: Beggar Thy Neighbor food policies cannot work. They only distort markets and force prices even higher. I call on nations to resist such measures, and to immediately release exports designated for humanitarian purposes.

Second, we must act for longer term resilience and contribute to global food security.

This means:

· addressing structural issues that impede agricultural development;

· ensuring long term investment in smallholder farming in developing countries, including technical and financial support;

· helping governments to reinforce social safety nets for the neediest and most vulnerable people;

· looking at rural infrastructure needs, as well as new financing mechanisms;

· eliminating trade and taxation policies that distort markets - not least through rapid resolution of the Doha round; and

· suppo rting promising research into optimal food crops and better animal production systems, and adapting known technologies to existing food chains.

And we should also reach a greater degree of international consensus on bio-fuels.

These are parallel tracks—immediate needs must not be met at the expense of long-term solutions.

The international system is already contributing to immediate needs.

The FAO has called for $1.7 billion in new funding to provide low-income countries with seeds and other agricultural support and has initiated a programme to counter soaring food prices.

The World Food Program has raised the additional $755 million it needs to meet existing commitments this year. We owe a great debt of thanks to 31 generous donor-nations, most notably the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It will, of course, need significant extra resources to respond to new needs arising from the impact of the food crisis.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development is giving an additional $200 million to poor farmers in the most affected countries and will want to do more as further resources become available.

The World Bank has established a new $1.2 billion rapid financing facility to address immediate needs and boost food production, including $200 million in grants targeted at the world’s poorest nations.

I have set aside a reserve of $100 million from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund to help fund new humanitarian needs arising from soaring food prices.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, NGOs and various civil society groups have mobilized as well. They are sponsoring new feeding programs to combat hunger and malnutrition, paying for medicine and sending children to school. Private sector groups are engaged too.

We will work together to scale up these efforts and to ensure that national authorities are able to coordinate their implementation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me conclude by noting that the world’s population will reach 7.2 billion by 2015. Today’s problems will only grow larger tomorrow unless we act now.

I call on you to take bold and urgent steps to address the root causes of this global food crisis. We want a firm commitment to moving ahead.

This will not be easy. It may require big increases in financial support—often in the form of grants and material assistance, not lending. The UN Africa MDG Steering Group has estimated the requirements to realize a Green Revolution in Africa at some $8 to 10 billion annually, just to boost productivity. This suggests that the overall global price tag for national governments and international donors could exceed $ 15 to 20 billion annually, over a number of years.

Whatever the final figures, this will require enormous political will.

We will build on what we achieve here in Rome , at the G-8 Summit in July and the UN General Assembly in September. To the extent that climate change figures in this emergency, we must take it into account at our upcoming negotiations in Poznan and Copenhagen for a comprehensive agreement on global warming.

We must therefore leave this conference with a sense of purpose and mission, knowing that we are allied in our determination to make a difference. Only by acting together, in partnership, can we overcome this crisis, today and for tomorrow. Hundreds of millions of the world’s people expect no less.

Nothing is more degrading than hunger, especially when man-made. It breeds anger, social disintegration, ill-health and economic decline.

In the name of the development goals we all set at the Millennium, the right to food and our common humanity, I urge you to act together now.

Thank you.    Read more...

Ethiopia: six million children threatened by drought

AFP reports — A severe drought in Ethiopia threatens up to six million children, UNICEF warned on Tuesday. "Up to six million children under five years of age are living in impoverished, drought-prone districts and require continuation of urgent preventive health and nutrition interventions," UNICEF said in a statement.
The agency added that 126,000 children were already suffering from severe malnutrition and needed urgent therapeutic care.
In addition to some eight million people characterised as "food insecure" and supported by a government programme, aid agencies are warning that over 3.4 million people require food aid in several central and southern regions. The World Food Programme (WFP) said it was seeking 147 million dollars (94 million euros) to tackle a shortage of 183,000 metric tons of food to meet the country's needs.
The WFP appeal includes 29 million dollars required to fill gaps in provisions of "blended food", a mix of soya and corn powder for malnourished children.
"Widespread drought , poor rainy seasons, heavy loss of livestock, limited food supply and soaring prices of food, fuel and fertilizer linked to the global food crisis are contributing to the troubled outlook of children in Ethiopia," the UNICEF statement added.
"The mechanisms and capacity to prevent and respond to the increase of severe acute malnutrition are in place but are under resourced," Bjorn Ljungqvist, UNICEF representative in Ethiopia, was quoted as saying.
UNICEF had recently hailed Ethiopia as "exemplary" for its efforts in curbing infant mortality rates.
"Ethiopia has some great gains in curbing child mortality, but they would be completely wiped out by events like this," Viviane Van Steirteghem, UNICEF's deputy representative, told AFP.    Read more...

Ethiopia: Soaring malnutrition hits children hardest

IRIN News reports on the worsening situation in Ethiopia, which, say aid workers...

"...has been hit by drought and rising prices that have once again caused massive food shortages. For example, the costs of some cereals have increased between 50-90 percent since September, stretching the ability of some households to meet their food needs. "The combined effects of drought, food price hikes, and insufficient resources for preventive measures resulted in an emergency that jeopardises significant child survival gains in Ethiopia," Bjorn Ljungqvist, the representative of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia, said.

Up to 3.4 million people are in need of humanitarian aid, while an estimated 126,000 children are in need of urgent treatment for severe malnutrition. Among children under five years of age, six million face the risk of acute malnutrition - mostly in impoverished, drought-prone districts.    Read more...

REACHing out: online survey

REACH is a network of government-led, solution-focused, country-level partnerships among the UN, NGO, civil society and private sectors, which aims to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal 1, specifically the target on child hunger: halve the number of underweight children under five by 2015. A key REACH objective is to improve tools and strengthen knowledge about how to scale-up nutrition interventions. REACH is joining with the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) to invite SCN members to participate in a survey seeking to identify successful, large-scale programs addressing child hunger. Follow-up interviews will seek to learn more detail about select examples.

Click here to access the survey.

For more information on REACH, contact Denise Costa Coitinho.
If you have technical questions about the survey, please contact our consultant administering the survey, Christoph Rothballer at rothballer.christoph@bcg.com.    Read more...

UNICEF: Responding to crisis in Myanmar

NEW YORK, USA, 5 May 2008 -- UNICEF has sent five missions to assess the immediate needs of children and families in Myanmar in the wake of the devastating cyclone that struck the country on Saturday. With estimates of the death toll rapidly rising, UNICEF will lead the relief effort in providing basic needs, including water and sanitation, as well as ensuring that children are protected and their education is interrupted as little as possible.

Read the full report.    Read more...

Rising food prices: international drivers and implications

The Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University has published its brief on rising global food prices, prepared for presentation to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Strategy Unit. Summary of key themes are:

• Food prices are going up. Average food prices went up by 3% in G7 economies between July 2006 and July 2007, and by 10.5% in developing countries; over the same period, corn up 60% and wheat around 50% on US market.
• Demand growth is accelerating. Historically demand growth averaged around 1.5 %/yr; now 2.0%, and Goldman Sachs estimate 2.6% within a decade. World Bank estimates food production will have to rise nearly 50%, and meat by 85%, from 2000 to 2030. World food consumption has been greater than supply for past five years, say International Food Policy Research Institute.
• The relationship between energy and agriculture is changing. Since food can be used for fuel, the potential for an arbitrage relationship opens up, implying greater linkage between prices for both.
• From yield expansion to acreage expansion. Historic demand growth has been met through increasing crop output per unit of land, but commodities analysts say amount of land cultivated will need to expand to meet rising demand. Strong potential for competition between land uses: food, feed, fibre, fuel (and increasingly, carbon sequestration?)
• Rising food prices are one of a suite of ‘scarcity issues’. Strong interlinkages and overlaps between climate change, energy security, water depletion, fisheries depletion, deforestation and other issues – never more so than in the case of agriculture and food (see appended table).
• An increasingly central issue for development and state fragility. While recent development discourse has concentrated on aid, trade and debt relief (and latterly governance too), scarcity issues – and above all climate, energy and food – and how to build resilience to them, are likely to emerge as increasingly central.
• Serious lack of multilateral capacity. Recent UN reform efforts have highlighted problems of fragmentation, ‘silo’ organisations and poor coordination. Multilateral management of the global food system may be the most extreme example – but barely addressed by the recent UN High Level Panel on System Coherence.

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Political fallout forces biofuel rethink

The New York Times' covers the political and policy rethink on biofuels following recent high-level calls to act on rising global food prices:

The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.

But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.

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Riots ring alarm bells on global food crisis...

Recent days have seen food riots and a string of announcements by major agencies in an effort to awaken the global community to the crisis in food prices and supplies. Thirty-three countries are reporting riots due to the heavy increases in food prices:



CNN reports on a "Food Crisis Spawns Deadly Riots". Global food inflation is reaching emergency proportions and could wipe out seven years of gains in fighting poverty.



High food prices are threatening recent gains in overcoming poverty and malnutrition, and are likely to persist over the medium term, says the World Bank:



Al Jazeera reports on the impact in Bangladesh:



WB's Zoellick is calling for a "New Deal" on global food policy, echoing the economic response to the Great Depression, underlining the urgent need for action:



And for the World Food Programme, its recent warnings of a perfect storm in global food insecurity are coming true:

MORE RESOURCES:

• Brown puts food, child hunger on G8 agenda
  
• Food price rises threaten global security
• Price of rice continues record surge
• US government ready to export rice to Philippines
• Poor Thai farmers guard their fields as rice prices soar
• Rising Food Prices Intensify Food Insecurity
• Development Gateway: Food Security

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WB: early childhood and malnutrition

"Children everywhere in the world have the same growth potential in the first five years of life. There is no reason why children in Peru need to be the exception!"The story of two very similar communities in Perú (Aprimac region), both living from local harvest and sharing a long history of poverty. The video focuses on how malnourishment from the very early years can seriously affect their physical and intellectual growing. From the World Bank.    Read more...

Congress bucks Bush food-aid plans

Reuters reports on the progress of the US Congress Farm Bill, the US$286 billion package that will set farm subsidies, food stamps, and food-aid policy for the next five years:

... Aid workers likewise expect Congress to defy administration advice and carve out around $450 million a year from the main food aid budget for longer-term, nonemergency projects. That set-aside for nonemergency aid would be in line with what the House passed in July, and would eat almost 40 percent of the overall emergency food aid budget.
Unlike emergency aid, the nonemergency programs channel commodity donations to aid groups, which sell the crops within poor countries to fund projects supporting more productive farms, improved nutrition, or better local sanitation.
According to Bob Zachritz, senior policy adviser at World Vision, an aid group that runs nonemergency food aid programs in more than 30 countries, the approach is based on the adage, "Do you give a person a fish or do you teach them to fish?"
He said the nonemergency programs, which have received about $350 million a year in recent years, can be more costly in the short run, but are ultimately more efficient because they can break the cycle of famine and food crises.

Read the entire article here and also see our previous coverage:

• US Senate plans $600m p.a. in long-term food aid

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Sanitation: the 'forgotten' MDG target...

"The cause of many of our diseases is the condition of our lavatories and our bad habit of disposing of excreta anywhere and everywhere".

Mahatma Gandhi, 1925

Ghandi had no hesitation saying that in his view sanitation was more important than independence. In this, the International Year of Sanitation, it is alarming to note that some 1.5 million children die every year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene, while more than a third of the world's population does not have access to basic toilet facilities.
In an interview with Inter Press, Andrew Hudson of UNDP marks out the enormous impact poor sanitation is having on children in developing countries:

Some 1.8 million children die each year as a result of diarrhoea -- which is 4,900 deaths a day. This is equivalent to the under-five population in London and New York combined. Access to sanitation is one of the strongest determinants of child survival: the transition from unimproved to improved sanitation reduces child mortality by a third. Astoundingly, an estimated 443 million school days are lost each year from water-related illness.

Read more.    Read more...

Record Financing For Biofuels, Not Food

The Inter Press news agency reports:

"Biofuels have quickly turned from environmental saviour to just another mega-scale get-rich quick scheme. Countries and regions without their own oil reserves to tap now see their farms, peatlands and forests as potential "oil fields" -- shallow but renewable lakes of green oil.
"However, renewable does not mean sustainable, and in most cases the only green part of biofuel is the wealth they generate.
"Not surprisingly, given the record high oil prices, worldwide investment in bioenergy reached 21 billion dollars in 2007, according to the U.N. Environment Programme. The Inter-American Development Bank announced 3 billion dollars for investment in private sector biofuel projects -- mainly in Brazil -- while the World Bank said it had 10 billion dollars available in 2007.
"Meanwhile development assistance for food-producing agriculture had fallen to 3.4 billion dollars in 2004 -- with the World Bank's share less than 1 billion dollars, according to the Bank's own World Development Report on Agriculture released in October 2007. And most of this financial assistance was spent on subsidising use of chemical fertilisers."

Read the entire article here.    Read more...

Hunger: 'gravest single threat to world's public health'

Following up on the findings of the recent Lancet series maternal and child malnutrition, The Economist reports "hunger has an even bigger impact on children's health than was thought", and:

...if the research is right, money for improving nutrition would be the most effective sort of aid around. At the moment, roughly $300m of aid goes to basic nutrition each year, less than $2 for each child below two in the 20 worst affected countries. In contrast, HIV/AIDS, which causes fewer deaths than child malnutrition, received $2.2 billion—$67 per person with HIV in all countries (including rich ones). Focusing on nutrition and mortality also makes sense... because it forces policymakers to pay attention to health-care systems as a whole, rather than trying to save children “one disease at a time”. Given the scale of the crisis, the case for aid organisations redirecting money and attention to the problem of hunger looks compelling.

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WEF '08: Call to action on MDGs

Covering the Davos session calling for urgent action on the Millennium Development Goals, the Associated Press reports:

Nearly 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day, half of the developing world lacks basic sanitation, 1 million people die of malaria each year, AIDS still wreaks havoc on poor nations and 72 million children are not in school, according to a panel that included Gates, U2 frontman Bono, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Among the speakers, Bono offered this:

"This is the moment when our generation gets to draw a line in the sand — or snow," (referring to Davos' Alpine setting). "Where other generations put a man on the moon, we can't put every kid in school. ... Where other generations fought fascism and injustice and prevailed, we fail in our fight against the (malaria-carrying) anopheles mosquito, which kills 3,000 children a day."

Find more articles on the session here.    Read more...

WEF '08: new push to combat malaria

Leaders including World Bank Group president Robert B. Zoellick, UNICEF executive director Ann Veneman convened in Davos to announce an expanded 36-month effort to achieve scale-up of malaria control across sub-Saharan Africa. Timed with the release of new report at the World Economic Forum claiming 3.5 million lives could be saved over the next five years if malaria prevention and treatment measures were rapidly scaled up in the 30 hardest hit countries in Africa, the accelerated effort will help malaria-endemic countries by combining the best practices of public health with the best ideas from the private sector.

The report, We Can't Afford to Wait: The Business Case for Rapid Scale-up of Malaria Control in Africa, was prepared by Malaria No More and McKinsey & Company on behalf of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM). It details how rapid scale-up would also increase annual economic output by as much as $30 billion in Africa, prevent 672 million malaria cases, and free up 427,000 needed hospital beds over five years.    Read more...

WEF '08: Gates calls for "creative capitalism"

At Davos to announce USD300 million in grants to develop farming in the least developed countries, Bill Gates addressed the World Economic Forum to call on the world's business elite to usher in a new form of "creative capitalism" to meet the challenges facing humanity:

"If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers, most of whom are women. The challenge here is to design a system including profit and recognition to do more for the poor."

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Zoellick: fighting hunger a global priority

On the eve of Davos '08, World Bank President, Robert Zoellick has used an interview with the Financial Times to call for more action on fighting hunger and malnutrition:

The Bank president said he would try to use the Davos gathering to "draw attention to hunger and malnutrition, the forgotten Millennium Development Goals".
Fighting malnutrition was essential to success on other development fronts, such as reducing infant mortality, improving maternal health and strengthening primary education, he argued.
Mr Zoellick said he expected food prices - and energy prices - to stay high for a sustained period. He said: "I think biofuels is an element in the overall demand picture."
But he did not single out booming demand for non-fossil fuels as the cause of high food prices, as some development experts have done. He said a big contributor to rising grain prices worldwide was increasing incomes and changing diets in China, India and other large developing countries.

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UNICEF: integrated approach key to child survival

Strategies to help reduce the number of deaths of under-fives feature in the latest stanza of UNICEF’s annual flagship report - The State of the World’s Children 2008: Child Survival.

“Community-level integration of essential services for mothers, newborns and young children, and sustainable improvements in national health systems can save the lives of many of the more than 26,000 children under five who die each day,” said UNICEF Executive Director, Ann Veneman, at the reort's launch in Geneva. “The report describes the impact of simple, affordable life-saving measures, such as exclusive breastfeeding, immunization, insecticide-treated bed nets and vitamin A supplementation, all of which have helped to reduce child deaths in recent years.”

The challenge is to ensure children have access to a continuum of health care, backed by strong national health systems, said WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, at the launch. “Innovative programs in many countries show that an integrated approach where each child is reached with a package of interventions at one time can bring immediate benefits."    Read more...

Landmark series on child undernutrition launched

Undernutrition is the largely preventable cause of over a third - 3.5 million - of all child deaths and 11% of the total disease burden worldwide are due to maternal and child undernutrition.
There is a golden interval for intervention: from pregnancy to 2 years of age. After age 2 years, undernutrition will have caused irreversible damage for future development towards adulthood.
Yet the international nutrition system is broken. Leadership is absent, resources are too few, capacity is fragile, and emergency response systems are urgently needed.

****

These and other stark findings are the conclusions of an international collaboration of investigators publishing their findings in The Lancet's maternal and child undernutrition series.
The series aims to increase awareness around maternal and child undernutrition and serve as a catalyst for national-level governments, NGOs and the international nutrition community to spur action and stimulate national interest, leadership, and commitment.

The five papers offer new evidence and findings across the following issues:

• Paper 1: Over a third of child deaths and 11% global disease burden from maternal and child undernutrition;
• Paper 2 : Poor fetal growth or stunting in first two years leads to large negative consequences in later life;
• Paper 3: Maternal and child nutrition interventions could prevent quarter of child deaths in poor communities;
• Paper 4: 80% of world’s undernourished children live in just 20 countries;
• Paper 5: The international nutrition system: fragmented, dysfunctional, and desperately in need of reform;

Full text of the papers can be read online at The Lancet, following free registration to the website. A dedicated website supporting the series is at www.globalnutritionseries.org where you can find key resources such as:

• About the Series: Information on Series authors, The Lancet, and the papers
• Global Events: Events are being planned in Ethiopia, West Africa, Peru, Vietnam, India, London, and Washington, D.C. Find out more about these events and how you can get involved
• Media Center: Members of the media can access press announcements, background materials, and submit interview requests
• Resource Center: Access reports, research, and more on maternal and child undernutrition

The series was launched simultaneously at events in London and Washington DC:

• Go here to listen to keynote speakers at the London launch including Dr Denise Coitinho, of WHO, seconded to WFP, and UNICEF's Dr Bruce Cogill, IASC Global Nutrition Cluster Coordinator.
• The presentation in DC was broadcast on the web and will be available shortly here. Also available is the powerpoint used by Prof. Robert Black, Chairman, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
  

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What Are You Doing Right Now?

World Vision Australia is helping 20 million people to break the cycle of poverty. Still the fact is every three seconds one child dies from preventable causes. One child every three seconds...what are you doing right now?

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US Senate plans $600m p.a. in long-term food aid

Reuters reports on a new US Senate plan that would steer more US food aid funds to development projects that "attack the root causes of hunger":

"In one key change, the plan would set aside $600 million a year, about half the amount appropriated in recent budgets for emergency food aid, to provide a third more support for programs to improve farming techniques in poor countries or teach mothers about childhood nutrition.
"Ellen Levinson, who heads an alliance of aid groups that receive U.S. commodity donations and sell them in developing countries to fund those programs, said the change would help wean chronically hungry countries from dependence on food aid."

However, the bill is also a locus for a complex web of competing issues and special interests which, says Reuters:

"...also sidesteps an entreaty from the Bush administration, which this year revived a long-sought plan to allow up to a quarter of emergency food aid to be bought in the developing world instead of shipping US crops overseas.
"The plan was billed as a way to make assistance more efficient, especially important in an era of soaring crop prices and steep fees for shipping grain across oceans.
"A government watchdog found this year that overhead consumes about 65 percent of US emergency food aid funding."

Read the full article here.    Read more...

Ending famine... by ignoring the experts

The International Herald Tribune reports on the extraordinary turnaround in Malawi from the brink of famine to exporter of food to its struggling neighbours:

'In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children's Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. "We will not be able to use it!" Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef's deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly. Farmers explain Malawi's extraordinary turnaround — one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word: fertilizer. [...]

Malawi's "successful use of subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa and the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and agricultural research."    Read more...

Maternal HIV and child undernutrition link to child mortality

A recent study to be published in the December 2007 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes sought to examine whether maternal HIV disease stage during pregnancy and child malnutrition are associated with child mortality. Low maternal hemoglobin concentration and child undernutrition were found to be related to an increased risk of mortality in this cohort of children. The study concludes that the "prevention and treatment of undernutrition in children remain critical interventions in settings with high HIV prevalence."    Read more...

Malnutrition and gender equality in India

"KOLARAS, India, 30 Oct 2007 -- When nine-month-old twins Devki and Rahul were brought by their mother to the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre in Kolaras -- located in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh -- Rahul was a normal weight and size for his age, yet his sister Devki weighed just over half of what she should have. Devki's condition was the result of severe malnutrition. Both babies showed such varied weight and health that doctors suspected less food was given to Devki, a common occurrence in some areas of India where boys are often given more attention than girls."

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Nepal: Street children sniff glue to ward off hunger

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs's IRIN news service reports on a dangerous practice gaining currency among the hungry street children of Nepal's capital, Katmandu:

Bhim Pariyar huddled in a corner with other boys like him, all trying to warm themselves around the fire they had made by burning plastic, paper and tyres.
“It’s time for fun now,” Pariyar told his friends as he took out the packet of dendrite [ a carpet glue].
“You know, this helps us to get rid of our hunger,” explained his friend, 14-year-old Rajen Subba, who ... cannot afford regular food or clothing to keep warm, and has been living on the streets for the past six years. [He] complains of chest pain and often gets sick. [...]
The adhesive glue contains toluene, a sweet-smelling and intoxicating hydrocarbon, which is neurotoxic. The solvent dissolves the membrane of the brain cells and causes hallucinations as well as dampening hunger pangs, and wards off cold.
“I forget everything. I won’t feel cold and hungry and can sleep easily,” said Shyam Tamang, 12, another street boy.

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Swaziland asks itself: food or biofuel?

OCHA's news service IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks) reports on disturbing dilemma facing developing countries trying to establish better food security: food or biofuels?

MBABANE, 25 October 2007 (IRIN) - The government of Swaziland announced this week that it would be allocating thousands of hectares to a private company to cultivate cassava for biofuel. About 40 percent of the country's one million people are facing acute food and water shortages.
"The cassava ethanol project has restarted the debate on how the country should use its agriculture land," said Sipho Mthetfwa, an agriculture extension officer in Shiselweni Region in the south of the country.
"The quick answer is, 'to grow food for the people', but government's stance is that we need to develop industry and new markets so people can collect wages and buy food, because traditional agriculture is too undependable."
As oil prices soar and biofuel production becomes more attractive, especially to poor countries, a global debate is raging over the possible impact on food security.
By placing the cassava project in drought-affected Lavumisa, in southeastern Shiselweni, where agriculture has been limping along for years, government is attracting criticism that it favours exports over food security at home.
"This year's drought has been nationwide, but drought has hit Lavumisa for 15 years," said Mthetfwa. "There are mostly small landholder farmers here - they are too poor to buy inputs for irrigation. And don't talk to them about alternative, drought-tolerant crops - they don't want to grow anything other than maize ... [which] has not grown well in years."

Time for cassava
Cassava is drought-tolerant and productive in poor soils, and has traditionally been grown by poor farmers in marginal areas. Between 1961 and 1995, cassava production for human consumption rose by 50 percent in Africa and 70 percent in Asia, the leading producer of cassava-derived starches, which are now being fermented to produce biofuel, according to the FAO.
Liquefied cassava starch is fermented from two to four days using a yeast, sometimes in combination with a bacterium. "A basic production plant - peelers, graters, fermenters and a distiller - can produce about 280 litres of 96 percent pure ethanol from a tonne of cassava with 30 percent starch content," the FAO says on its website.
The Swazi government is allocating unirrigated land to a local concern called USA Distilleries, which makes molasses from the sugar cane grown in the eastern lowveld but is based in Big Bend, a town 60km north of Lavumisa. The company is investing more than US$5 million in the biofuel project, which is expected to generate 700 jobs in an area that has remained undeveloped since the country's independence in 1968.
USA Distilleries declined to comment on its new venture but more details are expected to be released after the environmental impact assessment has been completed.
"The ethanol made from cassava will be sold overseas, where there is a ready market," said Lutfo Dlamini, Minister of Enterprise and Employment, who announced the arrangement this week.

Cautious response
The proponents of prioritising food security over revenue from biofuel cite government's efforts in the 1990s to encourage small-scale farmers to form cooperatives to grow the "cash crop", sugar cane, rather than food. When sugar prices started falling three years ago the cooperatives went bankrupt. "If we had grown vegetables for the market we would be in business today," said Abner Dlamini, a member of a cooperative that was dissolved in 2005.
Florence Dube, a food aid worker in Manzini, the main commercial town, said, "There is a need for food today. Food prices are so high that this is an investment as worthy as ethanol. If the fields of Lavumisa can be irrigated to grow cassava, they can be irrigated to grow food for people."
''The quick answer is, 'to grow food for the people', but government's stance is that we need to develop industry and new markets so people can collect wages and buy food, because traditional agriculture is too undependable''
However, a source at the ministry of enterprises pointed out that "This company is a distillery and not a food processor. It can only do the business it does. Creating jobs at a place where there are absolutely none right now is one way of addressing the food crisis."
The ministry of agriculture also declined to comment on the project, but said it was pursuing irrigation schemes aimed at small-scale farmers on communal Swazi Nation Land, where 80 percent of the population lives.
Mfomfo Nkhambule, a member of parliament who has been critical of government attempts to cultivate sugar cane rather than staple foods, has raised his concerns in parliament, but few oher politicians have commented on the food crisis.
"As long as the WFP [World Food Programme] and others are providing food, there seems a lack of urgency," a local newspaper columnist commented.

Skewed priorities
Agriculture extension officer Mthetfwa said the cassava ethanol project illustrated a similar skewing of priorities. "We cannot depend on food aid to come to us indefinitely ... from what I hear, the donors are wondering why we are not doing more for ourselves with the resources we have."
Treasure Maphanga, the director of the Esicojeni Foundation, a child hunger alleviation programme run by business and civil society, commented at a press briefing this week, "I am angry at the fact that, with all the human and natural resources, this country still depends on food handouts. We have an opportunity to correct the situation by the involvement of all people in the fight against the dependency syndrome."
At the beginning of 2007 the WFP projected that 220,000 people would be in need of assistance in Swaziland, but has since increased this figure to 365,000 beneficiaries receiving assistance from October 2007 until the next harvest in April 2008.

Read the full article here.
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Wondrous Plumpynut: "like penicillin for malnutrition!"

The push for scaling up the use of Plumpynut, the promising new RUTF, got a huge boost when US TV network CBS aired an 11 minute feature this week on "60 Minutes" by high-profile journalist Anderson Cooper. Cooper asks:

"... Why are so many kids dying? Because they can't get the milk, vitamins and minerals their young bodies need. Mothers in these villages can't produce enough milk themselves and can't afford to buy it. Even if they could, they can't store it -- there's no electricity, so no refrigeration. Powdered milk is useless because most villagers don't have clean water. Plumpynut was designed to overcome all these obstacles ... Plumpynut is cheap, nutritious and needs no refrigeration. It is saving starving children in the developing world and could save more … if there were more of it."

To watch the full story click here. And below is an audio transcript of the story:

A Life Saver Called "Plumpynut"
Oct. 21, 2007
(CBS) You've probably never heard a good news story about malnutrition, but you're about to. Every year, malnutrition kills five million children -- that's one child every six seconds. But now, the Nobel Prize-winning relief group "Doctors Without Borders" says it finally has something that can save millions of these children.
It's cheap, easy to make and even easier to use. What is this miraculous cure? As CNN's Anderson Cooper reports, it's a ready-to-eat, vitamin-enriched concoction called "Plumpynut," an unusual name for a food that may just be the most important advance ever to cure and prevent malnutrition.
"It's a revolution in nutritional affairs," says Dr. Milton Tectonidis, the chief nutritionist for Doctors Without Borders.
"Now we have something. It is like an essential medicine. In three weeks, we can cure a kid that is looked like they're half dead. We can cure them just like an ntibiotic. It's just, boom! It's a spectacular response," Dr. Tectonidis says.
"It's the equivalent of penicillin, you're saying?" Cooper asks.
"For these kids, for sure," the doctor says.
No kids need it more than a group of children 60 Minutes saw in Niger, a desperately poor country in West Africa, where child malnutrition is so widespread that most mothers have watched at least one of their children die.
Why are so many kids dying? Because they can't get the milk, vitamins and minerals their young bodies need. Mothers in these villages can't produce enough milk themselves and can't afford to buy it. Even if they could, they can't store it -- there's no electricity, so no refrigeration. Powdered milk is useless because most villagers don't have clean water. Plumpynut was designed to overcome all these obstacles.
Plumpynut is a remarkably simple concoction: it is basically made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. It tastes like a peanut butter paste. It is very sweet, and because of that kids cannot get enough of it.
The formula was developed by a nutritionist. It doesn't need refrigeration, water, or cooking; mothers simply squeeze out the paste. Many children can even feed themselves. Each serving is the equivalent of a glass of milk and a multivitamin.
To see the impact it's having, 60 Minutes drove for 12 hours from Niger's capital to a remote village, where every week Doctors Without Borders hand out Plumpynut. After sleeping in a field under mosquito nets, Cooper and the team awoke at sunrise to find mothers emerging from the fields. Many had walked for hours in the dark, along treacherous paths, avoiding scorpions, spiders and poisonous snakes.
Rivers of women flowed into the site and within minutes there were more than a thousand of them, all waiting to get packets or tubs of Plumpynut. In a land where plastic bags are a luxury, they carry the food home in their scarves, their hands, or simply stacked on top of their heads.
"When you see some of these kids they don't look sick. They don't look malnourished. They don't have bloated bellies or little stick arms," Cooper remarks.
"The ones that we're used to seeing on TV, that's the worst of the worst of the worst. It's the tip of the iceberg. And then below that, there's the iceberg. So, there's a whole spectrum of malnutrition," Dr. Tectonidis says. "And when we go and check these kids, well, they're way off in height or in weight. They're way off."
Niger has become Plumpynut's proving ground. A daily dose costs about $1; small factories mix it here and in three other African countries. Tectonidis says other companies could make similar products wherever children need them.
"There's many countries in Africa now saying, 'We want a factory. We want a factory.' Well let's give it to them," he says. "We just have to focus on these areas. We don't have to feed the whole world. We have to go for the jugular. Where are they dying? Where are they wasted? That's where we have to intervene. If you feed them well until they're two or three years old it's won. They're healthy, they can get a healthy life. If you miss that window, it's finished."
In Niger, most children need help now during what's called the "hunger season," just before the new harvest. Old food supplies have run out and about all that's left is millet, a basic grain women pound for porridge. But millet doesn't have enough nutrients to keep kids alive; in America we use it as birdseed.
Normally a children's hospital 60 Minutes visited would have more patients than beds. But now, thanks to Plumpynut, it has empty beds. Dr. Susan Shepherd, a pediatrician from Butte, Mont., runs Doctors Without Borders in Niger.
She says children that would have been hospitalized in the past can now be treated at home. "The reason we can do that is because we can give children Plumpynut here in the ambulatory center, and they take a week's ration home. Moms treat their children at home and come back every week for a weight check," Dr. Shepherd explains.
That's what Sahia Ibrahim has been doing. She's already lost four children to malnutrition. Now her six-month-old twins, Hassana and Husseina, are malnourished and she's worried they might die too. So she's been coming to the hospital for Plumpynut.
Hassana, at six months old, weighs only seven pounds. While that's what a newborn should weigh, the little girl has put on a pound in just a week thanks to Plumpynut.
Children are weighed and measured at the distribution sites. They're also examined to make sure they don't have any serious infections.
Malnutrition destroys a child's immune system, so they're more susceptible to diseases and less capable of recovering from them.
"Often these kids aren't even hungry. It's the opposite. They are anorexic because of the deficiencies they have. They lose their appetite," Tectonidis explains.
That's what happened to Mansour Miko and Maroufee Mazoo. Less than a year old, they had stopped eating and became listless and weak -- so weak that when their mothers brought them to get Plumpynut, the nurse put them in a van and sent them straight to the hospital. Three days later however, they were smacking their lips on Plumpynut, almost ready to go home.
"Have you seen kids who were on the brink of death brought back by Plumpynut?" Cooper asks.
"Oh, yeah, for sure. Again and again and again and again," Dr.Shepherd says.
But not always. Sometimes parents wait too long before bringing their child to doctors. 60 Minutes found Rashida Mahmadou in intensive care, barely clinging to life.
Rashida's condition was very serious. Her skin was literally peeling away -- one side effect of malnutrition, as skin becomes thin, pliable, cracks easily, and bacteria invade.
Just two hours later, Rashida's little heart stopped beating. She was just 19 months old.
"She died of severe, acute malnutrition," says Shepherd, who says she sees this happening every day.
Asked how she deals with so many kids dying, Shepherd tells Cooper, "It breaks your heart. It can break your spirit. It can ruin your confidence in your ability to be a good doctor. And it is sad. And I carry memories of many, many children with me and I'll carry them with me for my entire life. But you certainly cannot indulge yourself in that kind of sadness. We need to do something about this."
If Plumpynut is the answer, how come kids are still dying?
"The answer is getting to kids earlier," Shepherd says. "Once children are as sick as she is, Plumpynut is not gonna save her."
Rashida was buried in a nearby cemetery. The grave digger, Salifu Ibrahim, told 60 Minutes he used to dig graves for about seven children a day, but now, on most days, he digs only one.
Asked why he thinks fewer children are dying, Ibrahim says, "It is God's will."
God's will and Plumpynut.
Two years ago this region had the highest malnutrition rate in Niger. But now, after widespread use of the Plumpynut, it has the lowest. Dr.Shepherd told Cooper they'll be able to treat more than 120,000 kids this year, up from just 10,000 children three years ago.
What about peanut allergies?
"We just don't see it," Shepherd says. "In developing countries food allergy is not nearly the problem that it is in industrialized countries. It's hard to imagine a less industrialized country than Niger. On a list of 177 developing countries, the United Nations ranked Niger dead last -- least developed. More than 70 percent of the people don't know how to read. Most work in the fields and earn less than a dollar a day. Nomadic goat herders still roam this land -- their children and their kids travel by camel. Goats seem to be the main garbage disposal, but clearly the goats are falling behind. You can still spot a skinny guard dog, but we were told all the cats have been cooked.
In the countryside, where 85 percent of people live, girls start marrying as young as 11 years old. By the age of 15 most are wed, and by 16 most have already become mothers. The average woman here will give birth at least eight times in her lifetime. But largely because of malnutrition, one in five of their children will die before they reach the age of five. Of those who survive, half will have stunted growth and never reach full adult height.
But now, with Plumpynut, more children are surviving and thriving.
"And kids are doing better. Moms say their child's skin is brighter. Their appetites are better. And they're less sick. You know, what more could you ask for," Shepherd remarks.
Doctors Without Borders is asking for more of this type of food. Their success in Niger proves, they say, that fortified ready-to-eat products, like Plumpynut, save children's lives. Dr. Tectonidis says if the United States and the European Union were willing to spend part of their food aid on this, more companies will start taking it.
"Even by taking a miniscule proportion of the global food aid budget, they will have a huge impact, huge impact!" Tectonidis says. "We're not even asking for billions. It will solve so much of the underlying useless death. So we gotta do that now."
"It's useless death," Cooper remarks.
"Wasted life. Just totally wasted life for nothing. Because they don't have this product, little a bit of peanut butter with vitamins," Tectonidis says. "What a waste."

Produced By Robert Anderson and Casey Morgan
(c) MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc.    Read more...

Discussion on Maternal and Child Health at 2007 CGI

From the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative

One in seven women in some poor countries die in childbirth. Nearly 10 million children under five die of each year, almost all of which are possible to prevent. Watch WHO Director General Margaret Chan, Norway Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, U.S. Senator Bill Frist and other renowned health experts relate the world's most critical health challenges and the actions we must take to meet them.

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Blue Skies or a Perfect Storm? Debate on Biofuels Escalates

"The competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as an epic issue," says Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based thinktank, the Worldwatch Institute. The debate over the impact on food security of the global "gold rush" in biofuels is hotting up. Divergent positions are emerging, ranging from the optimistic:

"We agree ... that the demand for biofuels will tend to lift prices for cereals and oilseeds. But is that a bad thing? What has been holding back agriculture in the developing world is not a shortage of land, but the rock-bottom prices caused by the fact that world markets have been swamped by surplus grain, from both the EU and US. If the demand for biofuels helps to change that, directly by lifting prices and indirectly by mopping up the surpluses, then it will give Third World farming the biggest single boost it has ever had. That, in turn, will do more to alleviate starvation in Africa and elsewhere than all the food aid programmes put together."

...to the cataclysmic:

A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to be gathering force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages and price rises. Even as the world's big farmers are pulling out of producing food for people and animals, the global population is rising by 87 million people a year; developing countries such as China and India are switching to meat-based diets that need more land; and climate change is starting to hit food producers hard. ...

"...the surge in demand for agrofuels such as ethanol is hitting the poor and the environment the hardest. The UN World Food Programme, which feeds about 90m people mostly with US maize, reckons that 850m people around the world are already undernourished. There will soon be more because the price of food aid has increased 20% in just a year. Meanwhile, Indian food prices have risen 11% in a year, the price of the staple tortilla quadrupled in Mexico in February and crowds of 75,000 people came on to the streets in protest. South Africa has seen food-price rises of nearly 17%, and China was forced to halt all new planting of corn for ethanol after staple foods such as pork soared by 42% last year."

See also:

• BBC quick guide: Biofuels
• OECD/FAO report on impact of biofuels
• International Herald Tribune: The misguided politics of corn ethanol
• Ending child hunger: Biofuels impact -- 1.2 bn in chronic hunger by 2025?

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HKI and Heinz to tackle Iron deficiency in India

Helen Keller International announced at the Clinton Global Initiative that it will partner with the H.J. Heinz Company to target 6 million iron-deficient children under 5 in India:

Working closely with the India Ministry of Health, HKI, Heinz, and other partners are developing sustainable, large-scale distribution of a multi-micronutrient called Sprinkles® -- a tasteless dry powder presented in single-serve packages, or sachets, that can be stirred into any food after it is cooked and before it is served. The powder does not change the appearance, taste or texture of food, does not require special measuring or handling, and is resistant to humidity – all of which encourage regular use. [...]

HKI notes that deficiencies in essential vitamins and minerals (VMDs), such as vitamin A and iron, are major causes of premature death, disability and reduced work capacity throughout the world. VMDs, in fact, account for 10% of the global health burden. In West Africa, HKI has been at the forefront of building public/private partnerships to promote micronutrient fortification of processed food staples and condiments as a sustainable strategy to address VMDs.    Read more...

Addressing child malnutrition in Bangladesh

The latest edition of the United States State Dept's eJournal focuses on food aid and provides insights into current policy trends including a sketch of the issues involved in the new US Farm Bill currently before Congress; an interview with World Food Programme Executive Director Josette Sheeran; and an article by Ina Schonberg, of Save the Children, who writes about finding the balance between food and cash in the fight against child hunger in Bangladesh:

Food aid tied to specific development objectives has worked in Bangladesh. It has raised households’ income, allowed girls to enroll in and complete school, and reduced food insecurity during periods of hunger. [...]

But it takes more than food to fight hunger. The effectiveness of food aid is maximized when programmed together with cash aid. Cash is needed, for example, for training people to grow their own food, supplying them with the initial supplies, and monitoring their progress.

Cash aid is also critical to ensure that food aid is programmed effectively for improving health care and access to water, improving schools, and responding to flood disasters. Innovative programs can include combinations of cash-supported programs, food aid, and even cash transfers.

Read the whole article here.    Read more...

ActionAid: "This is HungerFREE"

HungerFREE is a new global campaign from ActionAid International which spans more than 30 countries and calls on governments to deliver on their Millennium Development Goal commitment to halve hunger by 2015, by ensuring that they respect, protect and fulfil the right to food; strengthen corporate regulations; expose companies when they exploit poor people; and protect poor women’s access to land.    Read more...

10 ways to "deliver as one"

In 2006, the United Nations Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence made specific recommendations which will have an important impact on the coordination of humanitarian and development actors within countries in years to come. UN participation will be crucial to a successful broad-based effort to address child hunger and undernutrition, therefore here are 10 ways that the panel recommended for the UN to "deliver as one" at the country level:

DEVELOPMENT
1. The UN should “deliver as one” at country level, with one leader, one programme, one budget and, where appropriate, one office. All UN programme activities will be consolidated at the country level, where the country wishes it. An empowered Resident Coordinator would manage the “One UN” Country Programme. There will be UN system-wide ownership of the RC system. UNDP will be restructured to focus and strengthen its operational work on policy coherence and positioning of the UN country team, and withdraw from sector-focused policy and capacity work being done by other UN organizations.

2. A UN Sustainable Development Board should be established to oversee the One UN Country Programme. The Board will oversee the One UN Country Programme, ensure system-wide coherence and coordination, and monitor performance of global activities. The Board will also main- tain a strategic overview of the UN system to drive coordination and joint planning between all funds, programmes and specialized agencies, to monitor overlaps and gaps. The Board will give a stronger voice and participation to developing countries, and report to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The Secretary-General should appoint the UNDP Administrator as a UN Development Coordinator, with responsibility for the performance and accountability of UN development activities.

3. A Global Leader’s Forum (L27) should be established within ECOSOC to upgrade its policy coordination role in economic, social and related issues. The Forum, at the Heads of State and Government level, would provide leadership and guidance to the international community on development and global public goods issues. The Forum would also develop a strategic framework to secure consistency in the policy goals of the major international organizations in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

4. The Secretary-General of the UN, the President of the World Bank and the Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund should set up a process to review, update and conclude formal agreements on their respective roles and relations at the global and country levels.

FUNDING
5. A MDG Funding Mechanism should be established to provide multi-year funding for the One UN Country Programme. Significant changes to the way donor funding is managed are needed if the UN is to work more coherently and effectively at the country level and globally. A new MDG Funding Mechanism, for donor funding would provide multi-year funding for the One UN Country Programme, governed by the Sustainable Development Board. Contributions would be voluntary and could be specified. Additional funding should be available at the discretion of the Board to reward good performing organizations, and to fund programmatic gaps and priorities in the system. UN organizations committed to and demonstrating reform should receive full, multi-year core funding. The funding cycles of UN funds and programmes should be aligned to facilitate overall strategic coordination of UN programmatic work. The assessed budgets of the Specialized Agencies should be reviewed to ensure they have adequate core resources to deliver against strategic mandates.

HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE:

6. The UN’s leading role in humanitarian disasters and transition from relief to development must be further enhanced. There should be stronger coordination through a “cluster approach” to establish lead roles amongst humanitarian agencies to deliver on specific needs. The Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) should be fully funded to ensure quicker, more effective flows of funds in response to disaster. The mandates of UN organizations – particularly the role of UNHCR - with regard to responsibilities for internally displaced persons must be clarified. Greater investment in risk reduction and early warning strategies is needed, with stronger leadership, quicker funding and better cooperation between the UN and World Bank in post-conflict and post-disaster transition. A clear lead role for UNDP in the transition from relief to development.

ENVIRONMENT:
7. International environmental governance should be strengthened and made more coherent in order to improve effectiveness and targeted action of environmental activities in the UN system.
The Secretary-General should commission an independent assessment to improve interna- tional environmental governance. UNEP should be upgraded and have real authority as the environmental policy pillar of the UN system. The Global Environmental Facility should be strengthened as the major financial mechanism for the global environment. The UN’s ability to help countries mainstream environmental policies into national development strategies should be improved. The status of sustainable development in the UN institutional architecture should be upgraded.

GENDER EQUALITY:
8. A dynamic UN entity focused on gender equality and women’s empowerment should be established. Three existing UN entities (UNIFEM, Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues, and UN Division for the Advancement of Women) will be consolidated into one enhanced and independent gender entity. It will have a stronger normative and advocacy role, combined with a targeted programming role. The gender entity will be fully and ambitiously funded. Gender equality will be a component of the One UN Country Programme, and remain the responsibility of all UN organizations.

BUSINESS PRACTICES:
9. A UN common evaluation system should be established by 2008. Other business practices, such as human resource policies, planning and results-based management, should be upgraded and harmonized across the UN system as a driver for better performance and results.

FURTHER STREAMLINING AND CONSOLIDATION:
10. The SG should establish an independent task force to further eliminate duplication within the UN system and to consolidate UN entities, where necessary. The task force should build on the foundation of the Panel’s work to clearly delineate the roles performed by UN funds, programmes, specialized agencies and regional entities, including the UN secretariat. Concrete recommendations for mergers or consolidation should be made, for early implementation. Up to 20 per cent savings per annum could be derived system-wide from this process, which would be recycled back into the One UN Country programmes.

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"Misguided Politics of Corn Ethanol..."

Opinion from the International Herald Tribune:

"American corn-based ethanol is expensive. And while it can help cut oil imports and provide modest reductions in greenhouse gases compared with conventional gasoline, corn ethanol also carries considerable risks. Even now as Europe and China join the United States in ramping up production, world food prices are rising, threatening misery for the poorest countries. [...]
"The distortions in agricultural production are startling. Corn prices are up about 50 percent from last year, while soybean prices are projected to rise up to 30 percent in the coming year, as farmers have replaced soy with corn in their fields. The increasing cost of animal feed is raising the prices of dairy and poultry products. [...]
"Corn-based ethanol also requires a lot of land. An OECD report two years ago suggested that replacing 10 percent of America's motor fuel with biofuels would require about a third of the total cropland devoted to cereals, oilseeds and sugar crops."

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Child malnutition: a view from Kampala

A paediatrician writes from the field in Northern Uganda:

Recently, I spent seven days at Lira Regional Hospital working in the paediatric units. I was a participant in one of the medical camps organised by the rotary clubs of Uganda and India, and the Uganda Medical Association and Association of Surgeons of Uganda. The camps operated in Gulu, Kitgum, Pader, Amuru and Lira districts. What struck me most was the number of malnourished children attending the Lira hospital. The children ranged from the seven months to five years.

Some of the mothers said they had had family break-ups, hence no source of income to cater for the family, while others were involved in land disputes and could not grow food. Many mothers leave their children home and spend most of the day either tilling their fields or offering casual labour to generate money to buy food. Children receive one main meal in the evening and another miserable one in the morning, comprising mainly leftovers from supper. These meals are grossly inadequate.The medical superintendent of Lira, Dr. Jane Aceng, blames the situation on lack of food, HIV/AIDS related illnesses and diarrhoeal diseases. Families have returned home from IDP camps to find no land, no home, no safe water, no proper sanitation, no food, and no source of income.

Nutrition is the foundation on which human progress is built. Without food and nutrition children are especially vulnerable to contracting life-threatening diseases, which expose them to further malnutrition and a vicious cycle begins.
Worldwide, the death toll from hunger and malnutrition far exceeds that caused by even the most dramatic natural disasters. Studies have shown that girls that are born underweight are more likely to have stunted growth, and in turn give birth to underweight babies who are more receptive to disease. Children need a good nutritional start early in life to ensure healthy growth and development and to avoid long-term damage. Many malnourished children face greater risk of dropping out of school and living a life of poverty.

As a result of the war in northern Uganda, access to land was decreased, limiting the capacity of families to grow their own food. Most food eaten in the households is donated by the World Food Programme (WFP) and consists of maize flour, cooking oil and beans.

This food aid, which began in 1996, provided 78% of the daily food rations. Reports from the Ministry of Health and the Norwegian Council say 30% of the displaced population either did not receive food aid or received it irregularly.

Other additional food aid sources were provided through the school feeding programmes. To complement the food ratios received from WFP, the IDPs occasionally did some petty trading within the town or got temporary employment in casual labour activities such as alcohol brewing, charcoal burning, or digging for other people in exchange for food. Sanitation and living conditions were also poor in the camps.

Studies show that fever, lack of de-worming and absence of parents aggravate the malnutrition problem. Therefore, mothers should be supported and informed about the benefits of feeding their children adequately. Infections should be dealt with as early as possible, which requires sensitisation of the mothers on the danger signs to look out for in their children. Regular de-worming of children as well as improving their nutritional status is crucial.

Efforts should be made to ensure that the peace process reaches a logical conclusion. When political stability returns to northern Uganda, families will be able to settle and re-cultivate their land.

To meet the Millennium Development Goal target of halving hunger by 2015 (MDG1), education and agricultural extension should be undertaken, with emphasis on assisting women's groups. Agriculture and increased food production should be followed by the creation of business and work opportunities. Hunger and mlnutrition can thus be considerably reduced as incomes increase.

The traditional response to acute malnutrition has been to refer children to a hospital or specialised in-patient treatment unit, to be fed special milk-based diets. Though this treatment is effective, families in rural areas may not have easy access to health facilities that could provide such care. In-patient treatment is mandatory for this type of treatment. But this may not be an option for parents who cannot leave their homes for several weeks. In addition, severely malnourished children are vulnerable to infections as a result of weak immunity and could be at risk in crowded hospital wards.

World Health Organisation, WFP, the UNICEF and the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition say about 75% of children with acute malnutrition - those who have a good appetite and no medical complications - can be treated with highly fortified, ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTFs). These are palatable, soft and crushable nutrient- and energy-rich foods that that can be eaten by children over the age of six months without adding water, thereby reducing the risk of bacterial infection. A simple RUTF recipe can consist of full cream milk powder, sugar, groundnut paste, vegetable oil and combined mineral and vitamin mixture in calculated quantities. RUTFs provide the nutrients required to treat a severely malnourished child at home, without refrigeration and even where hygiene conditions are not perfect.

Studies in Mulago Hospital show that children admitted to the Mwanamugimu Nutrition Unit who received RUTF had a higher weight gain than those using the traditional high-energy milk. Considering this advantage, coupled with the definitely much higher weight gain observed and the convenience of administering the mixture in a home setting, RUTF can be a potentially better alternative to use in these children.

Interested donors could look at this as a better alternative to manage the plight of the malnourished children in the war-torn northern Uganda.

The problem of child growth and development is not only a medical one but it is also social and economic. The goal should be to create conditions in which women and children can thrive. This includes healthy mothers during pregnancy, better education, effective disease control and household food security.

By Angelina Kakooza Mwesige, Kampala. The writer is a paediatrician.

Source: AllAfrica.com

More: With prospects of peace in northern Uganda, displaced families yearn for home    Read more...

Plumpy'nut key in the fight against acute malnutrition

From UNICEF TV:

"Two years after Niger's severe nutrition crisis, the sight of undernourished children is less common than it was, but chronic malnutrition still affects more than 50 percent of the country's young children. And 10 per cent of Niger's children suffer from acute malnutrition, even when the harvests are good. Like many therapeutic health centres across Niger, the UNICEF-supported clinic in Tillabery -- an hour away from the capital, Niamey -- gives Plumpy'nut to severely malnourished children. The high-protein, high-energy, peanut-based paste typically comes in foil wrappers or small plastic tubs, which are practical for children who can easily eat them."

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Handwashing with soap...

Once introduced, interventions to promote hand washing with soap have remarkable capacity for sustainability with one study demonstrating that two years after a four-month intervention with the provision of free soap, more than three-quarters of mothers continued to purchase and use soap. The annual cost of soap alone for a household of five is approximately US$5.82.(1)


1. See The Global Framwork for Action to End Child Hunger and Undernutrition. (WFP, UNICEF and others 2006-07)

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Spotlight on exclusive breastfeeding

UNICEF correspondent Nina Martinek reports on breastfeeding and nutrition programmes in Koupela, Burkina Faso. For a rundown of events and activities worldwide during World Breastfeeding Week, click here. Meanwhile, a tribute to breastfeeding mothers everywhere...
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Joint programming in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan

Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan
Together for Health: Regional Co-Operation in Health and Nutrition
To promote regional co-operation the UN Country Team (UNCT) is facilitating a joint programme on health among the countries of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan focusing on six key areas critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals: polio eradication, salt iodisation, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, pandemic influenza and malaria. The initiative has the backing of Afghan President Karzai as well as the Minister for Public Health and seeks to turn the Kabul Declaration on regional collaboration in health, signed by these 3 countries in April 2006, into a tri-laterally agreed action plan of implementation. ... The initiative envisages adding an international co-operation component to existing health strategies with a view to:

1. facilitate the sharing of good practices, including through exchanges, visits, study tours, joint conferences and identification of priorities exchange actions;
2. develop and endorse an operational joint work plan to address cross-border health issues with a time frame and supporting partners endorsed by the three countries; and
3. assign inter-country standing committees with representation from the three countries to work on the defined six main areas of collaboration.

Similar joint programmes involving the three countries and supported by the UN Country Teams are being developed on Population Movements (led by Iran) and Disaster Management (led by Pakistan).

SOURCE: Synthesis of Resident Coordinator Annual Reports 2006.

Find out more about the Resident Coordinator System, UN Country Teams,and the 'Deliver as One' pilots at the UN Development Group.    Read more...

Breastfeeding right after birth reduces infant deaths

Enabling new mothers to nurse their babies immediately after birth will prevent a significant number of neonatal deaths in developing countries, says the UN. “More than one third of child deaths occur during the first fragile month of life,” said Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director. “Early breastfeeding provides critical nutrients, protects infants against deadly diseases and fosters growth and development.” UNICEF estimates that exclusive breastfeeding to the age of six months can prevent the deaths of 1.3 million children under the age of five each year. And, says the World Health Organisation, mother’s “first milk” not only nourishes, but it also protects and is “just what the baby needs during its first few days”. Stressing that breastfeeding needs to start in the first hour of life, WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, said: “In a world where more than 10 million children die before their fifth birthday due to preventable causes... there is simply no time to waste.” Read more here.    Read more...

2020 Vision -- Taking Action for the World's Poor and Hungry

In Beijing in October the International Food Policy Research Institute will sponsor 2020 Vision, a conference which will look at what steps are needed to improve the welfare of the world's poorest and hungry people, based on the best available research and experience. The conference will address critical questions:

• Who are the poorest of the poor and those most afflicted by hunger?
• What are the key pathways out of extreme poverty and hunger?
• Which strategies, policies, and interventions have been successful in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger so far?
• How can existing actions to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger be accelerated or scaled up, and how can innovative solutions be designed and implemented for and with the poorest and hungry?

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"Running on Empty": the impact of stunting

"Trailer for Running on Empty, by Save the Children UK and TVE. Running on Empty is the story of two young mothers, Asemu in Ethiopia and Dawn in Wales. Neither can afford to feed her children properly..." In 2000, world leaders promised to halve hunger and poverty by 2015. But children are still going hungry."    Read more...

MDG midterm report: "Pace of progress on child hunger is too slow"

At the midway mark to 2015, the latest progress report on the Millenium Development Goal has been released. On the key MDG target on child undernutrition (between 1990 and 2015, halve the proportion of children under age five who are underweight) the report sums up:

"Child hunger is declining in all regions, but meeting the target will require accelerated progress"

The report goes on to say:

"Globally, the proportion of children under five who are underweight declined by one fifth over the period 1990-200 . Eastern Asia showed the greatest improvement and is surpassing the MDG target, largely due to nutritional advances in China. Western Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have also demonstrated significant progress, with underweight prevalence dropping by more than one third. The greatest proportions of children going hungry continue to be found in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Poor progress in these regions means that it is unlikely that the global target will be met. If current trends continue, the world will miss the 2015 target by 30 million children, essentially robbing them of their full potential."

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Biofuels impact: 1.2 bn in chronic hunger by 2025?

C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, writing in the May-June issue of Foreign Affairs, highlight the threat that the move to corn-based ethanol production poses for the hungry poor:

Realistically, however, resorting to biofuels is likely to exacerbate world hunger. Several studies by economists at the World Bank and elsewhere suggest that caloric consumption among the world's poor declines by about half of one percent whenever the average prices of all major food staples increase by one percent. When one staple becomes more expensive, people try to replace it with a cheaper one, but if the prices of nearly all staples go up, they are left with no alternative.

In a study of global food security we conducted in 2003, we projected that given the rates of economic and population growth, the number of hungry people throughout the world would decline by 23 percent, to about 625 million, by 2025, so long as agricultural productivity improved enough to keep the relative price of food constant. But if, all other things being equal, the prices of staple foods increased because of demand for biofuels, as the IFPRI projections suggest they will, the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by over 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods. That means that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025 -- 600 million more than previously predicted.

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Counting the cost of child undernutrition

Pedro Medrano, writing in the Toronto Star, says "the facts are in. Chronic hunger, which afflicts hundreds of millions of children around the world, not only carries a heavy moral and human burden to society but also a huge economic cost that undermines international and national efforts to eradicate poverty. A new study – the first of its kind in the region – of seven Central American countries by the World Food Program and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, has found that in 2004 alone, the average cost of child undernutrition for the region was the equivalent of 6.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). The total cost for all seven countries amounted to $6.7 billion (U.S.)."    Read more...

Child malnutrition crisis in Kenyan camps

Reuters AlertNet reports

"Three United Nations agencies today urged donors to support an appeal for a full package of assistance to cut malnutrition rates at crisis levels among children under five in refugee camps in Kenya. They warned that a host of problems linked with persistently high malnutrition had to be tackled now to save lives."

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PM Singh puts child malnutrition on agenda

India's Economic Times reports from New Delhi:

Concerned over the high levels of child malnutrition in the country, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said the issue will be put on the agenda of the National Development Council (NDC). Singh is understood to have stated this during a discussion with an advocacy group of MPs and celebrities. "The Prime Minister said the campaign against malnutrition should become a national movement and he told us that it will be part of the NDC's agenda," Lok Sabha MP Sachin Pilot told reporters.
The group, that went on a field visit to Madhya Pradesh in March this year to study the functioning of the Integrated Child Development Scheme on the ground, also met UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi who voiced her concern for the large number of malnourished children and promised the support of the ruling UPA for the cause.
Intending to bring the issue of high levels of infant malnutrition to the forefront, a group of MPs including Sachin Pilot (Congress), Jay Panda (BJD), Shahnawaz Hussain (BJP), Supriya Sule (NCP) and Mohammed Salim (CPI(M)) have joined hands to form a pressure group in Parliament.
Celebrities like ghazal singer Penaaz Masani, actors Rahul Bose and Gauri Karnik have also joined the group which will make regular field visits to study the functioning of the anganwadi centres and the midday-meal scheme.
The group also met Opposition leader L K Advani and Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury.
"The intention is not to blame anyone but to work towards our goal of reducing malnutrition levels by ten per cent in the next three years," said Panda.

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Mainstreaming Nutrition as a Social Welfare

Devi Sridhar, writing for the UN Chronicle, comments:

Given the World Bank's significant role in the global nutrition community, a review of its 2006 report, "Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development", is critical. International and national interests in nutrition have never been higher, as such concerns are tightly integrated into the Millennium Development Goals. The past few years have also witnessed several debates over "what works" in reducing undernutrition, such as the Save the Children UK's report on the growth monitoring model.

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Millions of children left behind in Eastern Europe

Despite recent economic growth, a third of Albania's children live on less than $2 a day, reports Christian Science Monitor. And according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), a staggering 35 percent of children in rural areas are malnourished; in urban areas, 17 percent are. In terms of child malnutrition – measured by the percentage of children under age 5 who are underweight – the World Bank puts Albania just above Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe.    Read more...

Social Protection for Mothers and Children

"The role of social protection in development," notes the Overseas Development Institute, "is being increasingly recognised by governments and donors for both its role in poverty alleviation and potential for growth promotion."
Social Protection is cited in the ECHUI Global Framework for Action [GFA] as one of several interventions which should attract special attention due to their immediate impact for children and mothers; their suitability to rapid scale-up at the household, school and community levels, and because they are not currently supported to the required scale by other initiatives. From the GFA:

"Safety nets and transfers to households have been shown to have an impact on child nutritional outcomes, including increasing child growth and reducing stunting. Such interventions are needed in specific situations and locally appropriate forms to address both chronic and acute shortfalls in family resources and ensure access to basic foods. Such forms of social protection already exist in many developing countries — including cash transfers, food supplements, public works programmes, and emergency responses — but may need to be scaled up or supported through capacity- building measures. Transfers to orphans and other children without viable family support are also needed in some situations."

For more info see the ODI Social Protection portal.    Read more...

"Children are the heart of the MDGs"

"If you look at the issue of hunger you also look at the issue of children.
Children are central, they are the heart of the Millennium Development Goals" -- UNICEF Executive Director, Anne Veneman.    Read more...

STC backs cash transfers

Reuters AlertNet reports:

"Save the Children UK believes that one of the best ways to tackle chronic child malnutrition and meet the first Millennium Development Goal is to provide regular cash benefits, like social security benefit or child benefits, to the poorest families as it has proven to be one of the most effective ways to tackle malnutrition. The charity is calling for national governments, DFID and the governments of other G8 countries to support cash benefit schemes. Costanza de Toma said: "Food aid can be a blunt tool for tackling chronic malnutrition. Putting cash, rather than food, directly into people's hands means they can buy what they need, not take what they are given. Save the Children is already doing this and we know it works - it is an effective and efficient way to beat child hunger."

Download STC's November 2006 review of the impact of cash transfer programmes on child nutritional status here.    Read more...

Gender key to cycle of malnutrition in South Asia

Why are child malnutrition rates so much higher in South Asia than in sub-Saharan Africa? Severe gender discrimination sets in motion a lifetime of malnutrition.    Read more...

New flour fortification device

The Micronutrient Initiative, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to eliminating vitamin and mineral deficiencies worldwide, has developed a flour fortification device to help combat anemia...

MI is planning to implement its program in Nepal, where 65 per cent of children under the age of five suffer from anemia, which is caused by a deficiency in vitamins and minerals.
"It's an extremely simple and rugged device that can be fitted to a small mill that processes most of the cereals that people in villages in Nepal consume," Venkatesh Mannar, president of the Micronutrient Initiative told CTV's Canada AM. "It does not require electricity and it can add predetermined quantities of vitamins and minerals to the flour as it is milled through the mill."

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MSF therapeutic feeding center in Sierra leone

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Therapeutic feeding in the home

Severe acute malnutrition remains a major killer of children under five years of age. Until recently, treatment of severe acute malnutrition has been restricted to facility-based approaches, greatly limiting its coverage and impact. Now, in a joint statement, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organisation have highlighted new evidence that suggests that large numbers of children with severe acute malnutrition can be treated in their communities without being admitted to a health facility or a therapeutic feeding centre.    Read more...

UNICEF faces child hunger challenge

UNICEF's Executive Board has resolved to join a new coalition fighting child hunger:

To combat child hunger and malnutrition, UNICEF and World Food Programme spearheaded a global partnership beginning in 2006. The Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative (ECHUI) aims to mobilize attention and action on the immediate causes of the problem.

The initiative also supports the development of national and community efforts to address the critical nutritional needs of millions of children and their families.

“ECHUI is really to capture people’s attention,” said Mr. Court, “and to help countries make it a priority in their national policies.”

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Ending severe acute malnutrition

UNICEF reports "an innovative approach is showing progress in addressing severe acute malnutrition, which affects an estimated 20 million children under the age of five worldwide. The approach combines community-based care for severely malnourished children with traditional hospital-based treatment.

"A Joint Statement by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) and UNICEF issued today highlights new evidence that about three-quarters of children with severe acute malnutrition – those who have a good appetite and no medical complications – can be treated at home with highly fortified, ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTFs)."

Severe acute malnutrition affects 20 million under fives, contributing to 1 million child deaths every year.    Read more...

A time for action...

World Food Programme PSA, June 2007.    Read more...

Coexistence of child undernutrition and maternal overweight

"The purpose of this paper is to document the prevalence of the phenomenon of the coexistence of a stunted child and an overweight mother (SCOWT) in the same household in low- and middle-income countries. We also explore whether this phenomenon is associated with a country’s level of economic development and urbanization and highlight policy directions for public nutrition." (Abstract)

- James Garrett PhD and Marie T. Ruel PhD, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

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The Importance of women's status for child nutrition in developing countries

This study "explores the relationship between women's status and children's nutrition in three developing regions: South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).... This research shows unequivocally that making a decision at the policy level to improve women's status produces significant benefits. Not only does a woman's own nutritional status improve, but so too does the nutritional status of her young children. Raising women's status today is a powerful force for improving the health, longevity, mental and physical capacity, and productivity of the next generation of young adults."

By Lisa C. Smith, Usha Ramakrishnan, Aida Ndiaye, Lawrence Haddad and Reynaldo Martorell. No 131, Research reports from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

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UNICEF Paper on Ending Child Hunger

UNICEF's Executive Board considered the Ending Child Hunger & Undernutrition Initiative in June 2007.    Read more...

Child undernutrition and morbidity: new evidence from India

This paper examines how the prevalence of undernutrition in children is measured and argues that the standard indices of stunting, wasting and underweight may each be underestimating the scale of the problem. This has important implications for policy-makers, planners and organizations seeking to meet international development targets. Using anthropometric data on 24 396 children in India, we constructed an alternative composite index of anthropometric failure (CIAF) and compared it with conventional indices. The CIAF examines the relationship between distinct subgroups of anthropometric failure, poverty and morbidity, showing that children with multiple anthropometric failures are at a greater risk of morbidity and are more likely to come from poorer households.
While recognizing that stunting, wasting and underweight reflect distinct biological processes of clear importance, the CIAF is the only measure that provides a single, aggregated figure of the number of undernourished children in a population.    Read more...

Child hunger's massive economic cost

Child malnutrition costs Central America billions of dollars a year, a burden that undermines its efforts to wipe out poverty, a U.N. report said on Sunday, reports Reuters.
The joint study by the U.N. World Food Program and Economic Commission for Latin America found that child malnutrition cost Central America and the Dominican Republic $6.7 billion in 2004 alone, or 6.4 percent of their gross domestic product.
It calculates the effects of malnutrition on health, education and productivity. It estimates costs such as increased health care and education needs as well as decreased economic activity through lower productivity.
"Child hunger is a moral issue but as this study demonstrates it is also a critical economic concern," United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at the U.N. offices in Panama.    Read more...

Promoting iodized salt in Nepal

UNICEF correspondent Kun Li reports on Nepal's efforts to promote the use of iodized salt in rural villages. The Government of Nepal is striving to eliminate iodine deficiency by 2008.
Credits: Producer:Kun Li    Read more...

Kenya: high malnutrition rates among pregnant women

"A UNICEF survey found that more than 60 per cent of pregnant women in drought-striken Samburu are malnourished, placing their lives and those of their unborn children at great risk."

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Achieving total sanitation in Bangladesh

Diahareal and other hygiene-related diseases continue to kill 115,000 Bangladeshi children each year. The solution is education.    Read more...

Report: Ten Year Strategy for the Reduction of VMD

Even though cost-effective interventions to reduce vitamin and mineral deficiencies have existed for more than 20 years, significant micronutrient deficiencies still plague many countries, according to a new report from the AED Center for Nutrition and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). Those deficiencies lead to increased rates maternal and child mortality and slower brain development in children.
The report, Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies: A Report for the Ten Year Strategy for the Reduction of Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies, was written for the Food and Nutrition Bulletin, and offers a comprehensive, ten-year strategy to address the problem, including increased use of food supplementation and fortification.

The report reveals that: vitamin A deficiency is a public-health problem in 118 countries; anemia caused by iron deficiency affects more than two-thirds of all pregnant women and young children in many countries; iodine deficiency affects more than 740 million people—13% of the world’s population; 20% of the world’s population is at risk of zinc deficiency; and folic acid deficiency is widespread even in developed countries.

The report will be discussed at the global Micronutrient Forum being held in Istanbul from April 16-18, 2007. The Forum brings together more than 700 representatives from major global organizations, businesses and the health and nutrition sector. “Millions of people are still affected by malnutrition, despite the availability of proven, cost-effective interventions,” said AED Vice President Jean Baker, one of the authors of the report. “We hope this report spurs action to significantly reduce rates of malnutrition around the world.”    Read more...

World Health Day: Every mother and child counts...

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How rapidly will child undernutrition respond to income growth?

ABSTRACT: This study explores that question using household survey data from 12 countries. In addition, data on the undernutrition rates since the 1970s available from a cross-section of countries are employed in this investigation. Both forms of analysis yield similar results. Income increases at household and national levels imply similar rates of reduction in undernutrition. Using these estimates and better-than-historical income growth rates, they find that:

the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the levels of child underweight by 2015 is unlikely to be met through income growth alone. What is needed is a balanced strategy of income growth and investment in more direct interventions to accelerate reductions in undernutrition.

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Touchstones

• World Hunger Series 2006: Hunger and Learning, World Food Programme, 2006
• Rome Declaration on World Food Security, World Food Summit, FAO, 1996
• Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development: A Strategy for Large-Scale Action, World Bank, 2006
• Strengthening Country Commitment to Human Development: Lessons from Nutrition. World Bank, 2005
• 5th Report on the World Nutrition Situation, Standing Commitee on Nutrition, 2004
• Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition, UNICEF 2006
• Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990
• Report of the Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger, 2005
• United Nations Millennium Declaration, 2000

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Complementary Initiatives

Initiatives efforts that are complementary to the Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative:

• The Millennium Project
  
• Focusing Resources on Effective School Health
• Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition
• Global Handwashing with Soap
• Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding
• Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage
• Integrated Management of Childhood Illness
• International Alliance Against Hunger
• Partnership for Child Development
• Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health
• Schistosomiasis Control Initiative
• Strategy for the Reduction of Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies

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Adolescence: a window of opportunity

This WHO discussion paper on Nutrition in adolescence – Issues and Challenges for the Health Sector contends that:

Adolescence represents a window of opportunity to prepare for a healthy adult life. During adolescence, nutritional problems originating earlier in life can potentially be corrected, in addition to addressing current ones. It is also a timely period to shape and consolidate healthy eating and lifestyle behaviours, thereby preventing or postponing the onset of nutrition-related chronic diseases in adulthood. As adolescents have a low prevalence of infections such as pneumonia and gastroenteritis compared with younger children, and of chronic disease compared with ageing people, they have generally been given little health and nutrition attention, except for reproductive health concerns. However, there are nutritional issues, which are adolescent-specific, and which call for specific strategies and approaches. The main issues in adolescent nutrition are micronutrient deficiencies (iron deficiency and anaemia), malnutrition and stunting, and nutrition in relation to early pregnancy.

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U.N. groups push to end child hunger

Testimony before senators emphasizes need for proper nutrients in food:

Washington – An initiative to end hunger among the world’s children was unveiled by representatives of UNICEF and the U.N. World Food Programme to a panel of U.S. senators. The “Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative,” scheduled for official launch in March 2007, will attempt to mirror the coalition approach taken earlier to eradicate polio in the world. The campaign plans to target malnourished children under 5 years old with food distribution programs, nutrition supplements, clean water, de-worming, educational campaigns and hand-washing instruction.

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Ending child hunger: it can be done...

This report by the UN Millennium Project examines current world progress towards eliminating hunger, and calls for the implementation of seven recommendations in the areas of: political action, national policy reforms, increased agricultural productivity for food insecure farmers, improved nutrition for the chronically hungry, productive safety nets for the acutely hungry, improved rural incomes and markets, and restoration and conservation of natural resources essential for food security.    Read more...

Vit-A for Manila's urban poor

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Early childhood development: the global challenge

From the Lancet series on Child Development

….. At least 200 million children aged under 5 years fail to reach their potential in cognitive and socioemotional development, because of four causes: malnutrition that leads to stunting, iodine and iron deficiency, and inadequate stimulation in their first 5 years of life. This lost potential is preventable. There are effective and mostly low-cost actions that can be taken to prevent the damage and remedy the deficiencies. Just as with ORT (and immunisation, growth monitoring, and the promotion of breastfeeding), the problem is not the lack of knowledge about what to do but the lack of professional and political commitment to mobilise action on the scale required—and for poorer communities in countries throughout the world. [...]

The challenge is clear. The size and nature of the problem is defined, along with the seriousness of its long-term consequences. What remains open is only the world's response, and our own…

By Richard Jolly, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK.
First published in The Lancet, Volume 369, Number 9555, 06 January 2007
(requires free registration)    Read more...

WFP: Global Action on Child Hunger

A new compendium demonstrates that the World Food Programme is already acting operationally to address child hunger and undernutrition across all its Regional Bureaux and in at least 48 Country Offices. Global Action on Child Hunger, documents that, as at December 2006, WFP's field activities on child hunger included:

• 35 programmes in health, hygiene and nutrition education
• 26 campaigns of parasite control (esp. deworming)
• 21 programmes of micronutrient supplementation
• 20 instances of supplemental food interventions
• 17 programmes of sanitation and household water treatment
• 4 programmes promoting hand-washing with soap

Key Partners in these activities include ministries of health and agriculture, UNICEF, World Bank, UNHCR, UNDP, FAO, WHO, UNFPA and literally hundreds of NGOs.
Global Action on Child Hunger offers a comprehensive picture of WFP’s unilateral, bilateral and multilateral efforts in the field to address child hunger and undernutrition, documenting activities which fall specifically within the range of actions and interventions described in the Global Framework for Action (GFA) of the Global Partnership to End Child Hunger and Undernutrition (ECHUI), .
Global Action on Child Hunger delineates the tangible steps that the world's largest humanitarian organisation is taking at the national and sub-national level to address child hunger and undernutrition; it records the breadth of WFP’s action on child hunger right across the globe, the depth of its field collaboration with valued partners, and how the Global Framework has been designed to build on an already existing platform of coordinated action.
Download the document by clicking here.    Read more...

Seven Reasons Why We Can End Hunger in Our Lifetime

Remarks at the World Food Prize Symposium by Josette Sheeran, member of the High-level Panel on UN System-wide Coherance, then US Under Secretary for Economic, Business, and Agricultural Affairs, and now Executive Director, World Food Programme, in Des Moines, Iowa, October 19, 2006:

It would be easy with all the challenges in the world today – nuclear proliferation, sectarian and religious conflict, terrorism and deadly diseases – to be pessimistic about our chances to make a dent in reducing hunger in the world today.
Yet I would like to outline for you seven reasons why we should be optimistic that we can end chronic hunger in our lifetimes, fulfilling the vision of Dr. Borlaug, Ghandi and others. I know that the outcome is far from assured. But every once in a while, circumstances align, opportunities open and what once seemed an impossible dream can be realized.

The speech in full follows...
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I am very honored to be here at the 20th annual World Food Prize ceremony and symposium – and in the great state of Iowa. What a warm welcome. There is something special in the water here, to have produced not only many of the world’s best farmers, but John Ruan and Norman Borlaug. And it’s where Ambassador Quinn grew up.
This prestigious award puts a global spotlight on the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.
I am especially humbled to be in the presence of so many people who in a tangible and measurable way have made the world better and safer for hundreds of millions of people.
I also want to pay tribute to the 2006 Laureates: their project – transforming central Brazil’s infertile land into productive cropland – is an excellent example of the productive relationship between Brazil and the United States as we combine our scientific talent to find new ways to combat global hunger and poverty.
It would be easy with all the challenges in the world today – nuclear proliferation, sectarian and religious conflict, terrorism and deadly diseases – to be pessimistic about our chances to make a dent in reducing hunger in the world today.
Yet I would like to outline for you seven reasons why we should be optimistic that we can end chronic hunger in our lifetimes, fulfilling the vision of Dr. Borlaug, Ghandi and others. I know that the outcome is far from assured. But every once in a while, circumstances align, opportunities open and what once seemed an impossible dream can be realized.
A generation before us John F. Kennedy inspired this nation to reach for the far off heavens and just eight years after his challenge, man walked on the moon.
As recently as 1967, 20 million people annually contracted smallpox. Of those sickened each year, more than 2 million died a horrific death and millions more were left disfigured. That year the World Health Organization launched the Intensified Smallpox Eradication Program. It was a global effort – and it worked. Just 13 years later, in 1980 smallpox was declared the first disease eradicated from the earth. And today we were reminded of the successful eradication of rinderpest, a terrible cattle disease.
Mahatma Gandhi inspired hundreds of millions of his countrymen to stand up without violence to a seemingly invincible empire and was able to win independence for India. Nelson Mandela’s refusal to bow to the stubbornly entrenched injustices of apartheid ended that practice and opened a new chapter in the history of South Africa and humanity.
I don’t want to sound naïve. There will no doubt always be hungry people. Natural disasters, conflicts and wars can disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands in just seconds. We will always need to respond to these emergencies and feed the hungry. And it is critical that we fully develop and fully fund the means to meet hunger emergencies.
But as the examples listed above portray, sometimes a perfect storm of positive factors come together – a good idea, dedicated people, scientific breakthroughs, new-found resources, political resolve and moral indignation – and we can make major advances in relatively short periods of time.
In his book "The Tipping Point," Malcolm Gladwell calls this type of change a "social epidemic," where change can be contagious and spread quickly through the world.
"Things can happen all at once, and little changes can make a huge difference," Gladwell says in his book. "That's a little bit counterintuitive. I'm saying, don't be surprised. This is the way social epidemics work."
Have we reached the tipping point in our fight against chronic hunger? Can we end forever the haunting pictures of gaunt mothers holding dying babies at their shriveled breasts or hollow-eyed children with swollen bellies and matchstick limbs? I believe we can.
Can we build a world where every child can strive to realize their potential, freed from the blight of under-nutrition and stunting? I believe we can.
I’d like to now outline seven reasons that, when taken together, create an historic opportunity – a tipping point, if you will – to banish chronic hunger in our lifetime.

Reason #1: Focus.
In September 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit the world’s nations came together in an unprecedented way to share a unified focus on achieving eight measurable goals by 2015. The first goal is to halve the number of people living in poverty and who suffer from hunger, as poverty and hunger are linked at their core.
Progress has been made – especially in Asia and in parts of Latin America. In fact Chile is the first nation to halve absolute poverty and has achieved that goal well before the deadline. In the last 20 years China alone has lifted more than 400 million people out of poverty.
The most pressing challenge lies in sub-Saharan Africa where the poverty rate has dropped overall, but the number of people living in extreme poverty has increased by 140 million since 2000.
And we have yet to reverse the hunger curve. It is estimated that 1 in 3 people in Africa are currently undernourished and more than a third of all the world’s undernourished people reside in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Food Program estimates that there are more than 852 million undernourished people in the world – 400 million of whom are children.
Although the measuring stick shows that we still have a long way to go, I am hopeful because the Millennium Development Goals offer much more than a statistical mandate.
Albert Einstein once said that genius is focus. And these clear goals – forged with the support of all nations – provide the mandate to rally developing and developed nations alike.
The challenge is – can we translate that mandate into strategic action plans, starting with those nations whose leaders have the vision and will to knock down barriers? I say yes.
Can the array of stakeholders – including the FAO, the World Bank, UNICEF, UNDP, the World Food Program, IFAD, the International Food Policy Research Institute, NGOs, Foundations and the private sector – come together around the leadership of individuals such as Dr. Swaminathan, co-chair of the UN Millennium task force on hunger in support of such strategies? I say yes.
In the United States we answered the call of the MDGs by creating a new type of cooperative assistance program through the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The MCC distributes substantial grants – hundreds of millions at a time – to nations that score high on good governance and investing in their people and offer strategic plans to meet the Millennium Development Goals.
Since its inauguration in 2002, nearly $2 billion has been distributed to more than 20 nations. MCC eligible nations include countries like Mozambique, Malawi and Burkina Faso who are using their self-designed MCC programs to meet the multi-faceted challenges of food insecurity – from rural education to the critical development of roads and infrastructure to policy reform.
And as of this week, Mali’s MCC Compact is before the Board for approval - $460 million plan designed by the people of Mali to address food security, poverty and economic growth. Congratulations Ambassador Diop – here today with us. MCC gives these nations a critical mass of resources to design their own strategy to break the cycle of hunger and poverty in their countries. It is critical that MCC continue to work closely with other stakeholders.
This global focus on hunger is being amplified by the press and in popular culture. Hunger has been a cover story this year in Time and Newsweek. The Wall Street Journal has raised the bar on coverage. Last year’s Live 8 concerts helped activate a new generation of young people. More than 1 billion tuned in via the Internet alone. The combined power of the press, the Internet and the youth of today can be another force multiplier for halving hunger by 2015.

Reason #2: Technical and Policy Revolution
The theme of this symposium is whether we can expand and "evergreen" the Green Revolution. Can the single greatest period of food production in human history now transform the face of hunger in Africa? To answer, I quote from Dr. Borlaug:
"Using proven agricultural techniques, Africa could easily double or triple the yields of its crops. It has the potential to not only feed its own people, but to become a dynamic agricultural exporter within a few decades."
New technology must be supported by good economic and agricultural policies. As Dr. Joachim Von Braun, director general of IFPRI has stated so clearly, "progressive policy action" is the key to increasing food supply and food security. The World Bank’s revolutionary "Doing Business" report each year measures every nation against the dozens of specific micro-economic policy levers that must be functioning for job creation and economic success. Enlightened leaders are using this as a strategic guide for action.
Can we take the same targeted action for agriculture? I say yes.
Can we use technologies – cell phones, computers – as a force multiplier for agricultural education, extension programs, best practices, weather forecasts, commodity market information? It is already happening. Now even the poorest farmer can potentially access the most up-to-date agricultural knowledge.

Reason # 3: Private Sector
Speaking of the press and information technology, we’ve all seen the recent headlines. Private philanthropy is entering the cause of addressing – and eradicating – the root causes of hunger at an unprecedented level.
And there is great potential in the partnership. These private-public partnerships are another critical factor in transforming the field of agricultural development – and the face of hunger.
One of the most exciting initiatives is the announcement that the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations – champions of addressing food insecurity for over half a century – are joining forces in an "Alliance for a Green Revolution." The initiative will funnel $150 million over 5 years to jumpstart Africa’s Green Revolution.
They will fund the development of more robust disease-and drought-resistant seeds to enhance distribution networks and fund university-level training for African crop scientists.
But the partnership with the private sector brings more than money to the table. It brings new levels of efficiency, expertise, results-based management, including scalability and measurability.
The United States has made public-private partnerships an important component of its aid strategy. Under USAID's Global Development Alliance initiative, more than 1,400 organizations, including international and local businesses, private foundations, NGOs, and governments are partners in 97 countries in the developing world.

Reason # 4: Ownership - at the individual, village and country level
The most powerful factor to ending hunger is when individuals, families and communities empowered with the tools to feed themselves.
Again and again we have seen how determined individuals can – and do – better the lives of many. Wangari Maathai, a brave woman and environmental activist, overcame resistance in her native Kenya to plant millions of trees. She was able to salvage ravaged forestland, protecting the climate and even food security. For her work, in 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
When I spoke to her at the 2005 Clinton Global Initiative, she was impassioned in her belief that Africa will only transform when people are empowered at the village level and their inherent wisdom respected by those intervening to help solve problems.
Over the last eight months, I’ve had the chance to travel to more than a dozen nations all over the world as part of Secretary General Kofi Annan’s High-Level UN Panel looking at coherence in development and humanitarian assistance. We have asked the critical question – how can all UN agencies, funds and programs develop and support a strategic, country-level approach to the MDGs?
In talking to people – whether villagers in the Pakistan mountains rebuilding from the earthquake or farmers in Haiti fighting the advanced erosion of soil - or Presidents and Prime Ministers in Africa or Latin America – I have met people who know exactly what they need to move from poverty to self-reliance.
In Jabori, Pakistan, I was invited into the village midwife’s home. It was made from UN tents and scavenged doors and windows from the earthquake rubble.
When I asked her what she needed most, she one clear wish: "We lost our village buffalo in the earthquake. A buffalo can meet the nutritional needs of pregnant women and children with its milk alone. We can have warm clothes from the wool. That is my top wish."
In Africa, I see a new generation of leaders who are stepping forward to help transform their nations. In 2003, African leaders at the Maputo African Union Summit pledged to devote 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture and undertake critical reforms. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development, or NEPAD implementing the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Plan – aimed at achieving annual 6 percent economic growth.
Donor countries are working closely to support this effort and we are seeing some success. For instance, Mali, Ghana and Mozambique have increased the proportion of their budget dedicated to agriculture. And Malawi is integrating famine-prone hunger hot-spots into the framework. Peter McPherson’s group The Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa has also done tremendous work on this front.
Trade and regional integration also offers great promise. NEPAD has recognized that agriculture is critical to Africa’s economic growth. According to IFPRI, removal of barriers in the non-agriculture sector which distort agricultural trade, would increase total agricultural exports from Africa by 19 percent and trade within Africa would jump by more than 50 percent. COMESA has done tremendous work in realizing these benefits. The Doha development round would not have launched without the leadership of a handful of African trade ministers showing leadership at its inception.
I also have to point to China’s success in reform of their agricultural sector. Agriculture has been a huge contributing factor as they’ve transformed themselves into one of the world’s fastest growing economies. China has become so efficient in producing food that they feed 22 percent of the world’s population using only 7 percent of the world’s land. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, food consumption per person has increased 50 percent with very few of its more than 1.3 billion people going hungry.
But all the gains in technology and policy knowledge are powerless to save lives unless implemented. Good leaders can – and must – demonstrate to other nations the power of good governance to change a nation’s destiny.

Reason # 5. Women.
The empowerment of women can be the ultimate force multiplier as the world struggles to feed a quickly growing population. As UN Secretary-General Kori Annan and laureate Catherine Bertini always remind us – study after study demonstrates that educating girls is the most powerful development tool we know.
According to FAO estimates, women produce more than 50 percent of the food grown worldwide. This includes between 30-40 percent in South America, 60 percent in Asia and 80 percent in Africa. This is a largely untapped resource in the fight against hunger because women are too often excluded from access to capital, to tools and seeds and to education. Women farmers now onloy have access to five percewnt of all the world’s agricultural services.
But a recent World Bank study found that if women received the same education as men, farm yields could rise by as much as 22 percent.
I am encouraged because we now have a clear global focus on this issue. The empowerment of women and gender equality is the 3rd Millennium Development Goal.
There are a number of programs that show how educating women farmers directly results in improved yields and higher family incomes.
UNESCO has developed a literacy project aimed at middle-aged rural women who have little or no education. They developed a literacy class using easy to use illustrated books to teach about farm techniques.
In one project in Yunnan province – one of the poorest in China – a woman went through the class and diversified her crops to include flowers, which she was able to sell in the market. She was so successful that 100 families in the village are now following her lead.
UNICEF and the World Food Program have also partnered in a program to end child hunger and malnutrition. This joint initiative focuses both on helping children under five have sufficient nutrients to prevent stunting and other diseases and also women so they can have healthy, full birth-weight babies – breaking the mother-child cycle of malnutrition.
One of the outcomes of the UN High Level Panel will be a strengthened and enhanced women’s empowerment and gender equality organization that can develop model programs in the field to ensure women receive the education and resources they need to improve agricultural productivity and ensure gender expertise is integrated into all UN programs.

Reason # 6: Micro-credit and other innovative policy mechanisms
I was very excited to hear last week that 1994 Food Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunis won the Nobel Peace prize for his work with micro-lending and his founding of the Grameen Bank. His goal was to empower the world’s poorest people to enable them to lift themselves out of poverty through access to financial information and micro-loans.
His loans – which often were only a few dollars and rarely more than $100 – usually went to women to help them buy tools or seeds, sewing machines or unprocessed grains that they could then hand process for a profit. Since Grameen Bank’s formation in Bangladesh in 1997, they have created a micro-finance network that reaches 2.2 million families in 22 countries.
Another example is the work that the nonprofit A Self-help Assistance Program (ASAP Africa) is doing in Zimbabwe. They began a financial literacy and saving club project in 2002 where they taught rural people about micro-finance and helped them organize pooled funding where neighbors could take out small loans or invest in joint projects.
From its modest start, the organization now has more than 10,500 savings club members – 85 percent of whom are women – who have created new income for themselves. Most importantly they are teaching about micro-finance in schools in these rural villages and more than 700 children are members of the savings club.

Reason #7: You.
Finally, the most important reason that can truly fuel this tipping point, launching an "ending hunger epidemic," is the people in this room today and the thousands of other front line warriors around the world doing battle in this important cause.
You are the leaders and innovators; you inspire and show by example. You understand the many causes of hunger and work daily on the solutions.
To rid the world of chronic hunger takes the dedication, commitment, and hard work of the humanitarians in this room who understand food aid: the scientists who have developed improved seed, the economists and the agronomists who understand developing world crops and their markets, the anthropologists who understand how to work with communities while introducing new practices, the courageous frontline hunger troops that deliver food to the malnourished no matter the challenge, the leaders who focus attention and resources, the policy makers who bring about policy change for the hungry in their nations, private sector expertise, and of course, foundations and NGOs who mobilize funds, donors, and workers.
Working all together, all of you are the force multipliers in the quest to end chronic hunger. It is seeing you all together in this room today, sharing ideas and discussing new ideas, that assures me that chronic hunger will be a thing we read about only in history books.
Dr. Borlaug, Wall Street Journal reporter Roger Thurow said today: "You taught us to increase food production and the world didn’t follow through." I say that today can be a tipping point to achieving your dream of eradicating hunger for all time.

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Oral Rehydration for Diarrhea: A Simple Solution

In the West, it's an inconvenience, but, in the developing world, it can be a death sentence. Time pins its spotlight on Diarrhea, a disease that kills more young children around the world than malaria, AIDS and TB combined yet with a simple treatment exists which could prevent many of those deaths. So why isn't oral rehydration therapy (ORT), an inexpensive a mix of salt, sugar and water, more widely used? Read the full article here, and for an introductory guide to "Surviving Diarrhea" through oral rehydration, click here.

More Resources on ORT:

• Rehydration Project
• "Reducing deaths from diarrhoea through oral rehydration therapy", Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2000: 78 (10); 1246-1255.
• New formulation of Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) with reduced osmolarity - Technical Bulletin from UNICEF.
• Rainbow Pediatrics Knowledgebase: Oral Rehydration Therapy
• Diarrhea: why is a simple and inexpensive treatment not more widely used? IRC, Updated: Monday 06 November 2006. Accessed 21 November 2006.

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Lugar: Opening Statement for Hearing on Hunger

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar made the following statement at today’s hearing on hunger:

This morning, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee meets to examine the issue of global child hunger and malnutrition. In recent years, the Committee has held hearings on global nutrition issues and the intersection of hunger and the HIV/AIDS crisis. These inquiries have underscored that societies and nations that experience high levels of hunger and malnutrition rarely function well. Consistent nutrition is an essential component of long-term economic growth and geopolitical stability.

We also have reaffirmed that the most basic act of human charity is feeding a hungry person. It is my belief that the United States should extend such assistance wherever possible, both because we have a moral responsibility to do so and because our security and prosperity depend on what happens overseas. We are extremely fortunate to be one of the great food producers in human history. We are also fortunate that we have many creative and compassionate leaders, some of whom are with us today, who have applied their talents to addressing world hunger, often in the face of desperate circumstances.

Tragically, many people around the world continue to face hunger and malnutrition. An estimated 850 million people go hungry, and most of them are among the world’s poorest. For the estimated one billion people around the world living on less than $1 per day, obtaining adequate nutrition is a challenge under normal circumstances. When this population faces a crisis that intensifies food insecurity, such as the locusts that devastated crops in West Africa two years ago, the drought in Malawi last year, or the genocidal violence in Darfur, obtaining sufficient nutrition is nearly impossible. As we discussed in a 2004 hearing, the AIDS pandemic is decimating the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, the rate of malnutrition is actually increasing on the African continent. This is a sobering trend, given the science and technology at our disposal in the 21st Century, and it must be reversed.

Although famine and starvation are the most severe and visible forms of hunger, poor nutrition, which often goes unnoticed, can also be deadly. Often, malnutrition is caused not by scarce food supplies, but by poor sanitation and disease. Even adequately fed people can become malnourished if their bodies are afflicted with diarrhea or parasites. In addition, gender inequities, the lack of nutritional education, and certain cultural practices have led to malnutrition in some regions of the world.

Hunger and malnutrition are especially devastating to young children. An estimated five to six million children die each year from infections and diseases caused by malnutrition. Nearly one-third of the children in the developing world are underweight or have had their growth stunted. Even before birth, malnutrition impacts a child’s development. We know that the children of malnourished mothers often suffer irreversible physical and cognitive damage.

Hunger and malnutrition also perpetuate poverty and undermine economic growth, development, and political stability in the developing world. Malnutrition often causes poor performance in school, which in turn leads to an overall loss in an individual’s productivity. If this situation is common among a nation’s youth, it becomes very difficult to make economic advances based on education.

Nations understood the critical link between malnutrition and poverty when they pledged in 2000 to meet the Millennium Development Goals, the first of which is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Specifically, these goals call on the world community to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. The primary measurement for this goal is the percentage of children younger than five who are underweight. Achieving the first goal goes hand-in-hand with the fourth Millennium Development Goal, which is to reduce by two-thirds the child mortality rate in the developing world.

As Chairman of this Committee and a former Chairman of the Agriculture Committee, I have advocated nutrition programs for the poor and for children in our country and abroad. I am hopeful that, as a result of our testimony today, we will better understand the causes of hunger and malnutrition in children and the impact these conditions have on individual health and the advancement of developing societies. Most importantly, we hope to learn about new initiatives to address this problem.

We are pleased to be joined today by a stellar panel of experts who are on the front lines of the fight against hunger. We welcome Mr. James Kunder, Acting Deputy Administrator for USAID; Dr. Julie Gerberding, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Mr. James Morris, Executive Director of the World Food Program; Ms. Ann Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF; and Ambassador George Ward, World Vision’s Senior Vice President for International Programs. Each panelist will discuss his or her organization’s efforts to combat child hunger and malnutrition, and comment on new initiatives to address this problem.

We thank our witnesses for being here and look forward to an enlightening discussion.

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UNICEF testimony before US Senate

Testimony of Ann M. Veneman, Executive Director, UNICEF, before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing, September 26, 2006

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the “End Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative,” and the importance of nutrition to children.
It is a special pleasure to appear with my UN colleague, Jim Morris of the World Food Program, who will be ending his tenure next year. He has been a valued partner and friend for several years, and so committed to the work of the World Food Programme. He has a record of boundless energy, compassion and creativity.
When I last appeared before a Senate committee, it was in my capacity as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Nutrition programs accounted for some 60 percent of the USDA budget. At UNICEF, I continue to pursue effective, strategic approaches to the health of mothers, babies and children, which was a hallmark of USDA’s WIC, or Women, Infants and Children Program.
Nutrition profoundly affects life at every stage of development, starting before a child is even born. It helps determine how healthy a child will be, how fast she will grow, how easily she will resist diseases, how well she will learn at school and whether her own children will reach their full potential.
It is critical that we understand the vital importance of nutrition and how serious undernutrition is around the world. One underweight and undernourished child is an individual tragedy. But multiplied by tens of millions, undernutrition becomes a global threat to societies and to economies.
“Underweight” is the indicator that is used for undernutrition because it is one of the most visible and easily measured attributes, and because it correlates strongly with disease and premature death. A few months ago, UNICEF released its “Progress for Children” report, revealing where the world stands on the first Millennium Development Goal, which seeks to cut in half by the year 2015 the global proportion of underweight children.
The conclusions of that report, which I would offer for the complete record of this hearing, are disturbing. Undernutrition is a global epidemic. In a time of plenty, it is estimated that more than one-quarter of the world’s children under the age of five are seriously underweight. In developing countries, about 146 million children, or 27 percent, fall into that category. Global rates have fallen only 5 percentage points since 1990. At our current pace, we will not meet the promise of the Millennium Development Goals to cut the rate in half by the year 2015.
It is estimated that persistent undernutrition is a contributing cause in more than 5 million under-5 child deaths every year. But underweight children are just part of the story. While millions of children are eating enough to fend off hunger, many are missing the critical vitamins and minerals they need.
Something as simple as a lack of iodine in diets can lower the average IQ in iodine-deficient children by up to 13 points. Vitamin-A deficiency can make a child significantly more likely to die from a common childhood disease like measles. And every year, iron deficiency means tens of thousands of pregnant women will not live to see their babies born.
According to “Progress for Children,” only two out of seven developing-country regions are making sufficient progress to meet the Millennium Development Goal target. But there are bright spots in every region, and there is particularly good news in China. The country with the highest population on Earth already met the Millennium Development Goal target regarding underweight children more than 10 years ahead of schedule. The proportion of underweight children in China dropped from 19 percent in 1990 to 8 percent in 2002, thanks in part to a strong government commitment to make nutrition a priority.
This dramatic progress shows we can make swift advances in a very short time if we take a comprehensive approach to a child’s needs.
The worst crisis is in South Asia, where almost one in two children under age 5 is underweight, or 46 percent. In India alone, 7.8 million babies are born underweight every year. That equates to the combined population of the state of Virginia and the District of Columbia.
Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole has been largely stagnating, with 28 percent of its children under five years old underweight. In South Africa, 12 percent of the children under five are underweight. In Niger, the rate is 40 per cent; and in Ethiopia, nearly half of all children under five, 47 percent, are underweight.
Millions of young children in sub Saharan Africa live in an almost constant state of emergency, fueled by war, famine and other crises. HIV/AIDS is putting additional strain on communities that are already struggling to find adequate food, and leaving children alone and vulnerable.
Examples from other individual countries show the rate of undernutrition is 48 percent in Nepal and Bangladesh, 47 percent in India, and 46 percent in Yemen and Timor-Leste. In Guatemala, the rate is 23 percent, the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Albania, 14 percent of children under five are underweight, the highest rate in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Compare that to only about 2 percent in the United States.
We cannot blame this global epidemic on food shortages alone. These numbers reflect broken health and education systems in countries, poor governance and corruption, and a widespread failure to provide basic services, such as clean water and sanitation. With 2.6 billion people living without a simple toilet, diarrhea has become one of the world’s leading causes of child deaths and malnutrition.
We also know the importance of educating girls, and keeping mothers healthy, especially in the developing world. Millions of women and girls come into pregnancy too young and too often. Far too many are malnourished themselves, and very few spend their teenage years in school. This impairs their ability to bear, raise and care for healthy children. At least 20 million babies are born underweight every year in developing countries, which puts them at a higher risk of an early death.
With so much at stake, we are long overdue for a different approach. We believe the “End Child Hunger and Undernutrition” Initiative will provide focus and resources to address childhood hunger. Food aid alone is not enough. Reversing the current trends requires a holistic approach to what keeps children healthy and developing properly. This includes healthy mothers during pregnancy, breastfeeding, better education, effective disease control, and policies that safeguard food access, even in times of crisis. There must be a special focus on protecting children under age 2. If a child falls behind during this critical development stage, he or she might never catch up.
In addressing the underlying causes of malnutrition, there are simple, practical things we can do that make a critical difference. The global campaign to iodize salt, for example, is bringing iodine to almost 70 percent of all households and protecting 82 million newborns per year against deficiency. The UNICEF-supported Accelerated Child Survival and Development program in West Africa has managed to reduce child deaths by an estimated 20 percent in some areas by delivering a simple, integrated package of nutrients and health care to families in community-based settings.
It is time to believe in, and invest in, the scaling up of programs that yield results for children. We have seen clear signs that point the way forward and evidence that our strategies work. While our goals are ambitious, they are not impossible, and they show a future where children have an equal opportunity to fulfill their unique potential.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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UNICEF TV: Saving undernourished children in Niger

UNICEF correspondent Nina Martinek reports on therapeutic feeding and treatment programmes for undernourished children in Niger.    Read more...

WFP: Child Hunger and Nutrition in Poverty Reduction Strategies

National governments have a crucial role to play in a coordinated effort to end child hunger within generation. Over the past decades national strategies have been produced in various developing countries to address poverty, foster economic growth and boost agricultural production, insodoing drawing some attention at the problems of hunger and malnutrition. The most recent set of such documents have been the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), produced in over sixty developing countries, providing a detailed analysis of the roots and determinants of poverty in the country, but also aiming to design a long-term strategy for the country to eliminate poverty.
This paper produced by the World Food Programme aims to analyse PRSPs according to the following criteria:

1. to what extent are PRSPs discussing the problem of child hunger and undernutrition?
2. are governments making any commitment to reduce child hunger and undernutrition over the period?
3. based on the review of several PRSPs, what sort of recommendations could be made to better mainstream child hunger and undernutrition in national development frameworks?

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Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition

Progress for Children reports on the world's performance in improving nutrition in young children, a crucial step towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. Undernutrition contributes to the deaths of about 5.6 million children under five in the developing world each year.

• Explore the interactive map to learn more about child nutrition
• Read the statement by UNICEF Executive Director, Ann M. Veneman, on the launch of ‘Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition’
• Digest the key messages from the report card
  

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WHO: How every child worldwide should grow

How every child worldwide should grow: the World Health Organization releases Child Growth Standards

The World Health Organization (WHO) is releasing new international Child Growth Standards for infants and young children which, for the first time, provide evidence and guidance about how every child in the world should grow. The new WHO Child Growth Standards confirm that a child born anywhere in the world and given the optimum start in life has the potential to develop to within the same range of height and weight. With these new charts, parents, doctors, policymakers and child advocates will know when the nutrition and healthcare needs of children are not being met.

The new Standards for infants and young children are the result of a global study initiated by WHO in 1997 to develop a new international standard for assessing the physical growth, nutritional status and motor development in all children from birth to age five. WHO and its collaborators, including the United Nations University, national governments, investigators from several universities as well as the Gates Foundation, undertook the Multicentre Growth Reference Study (MGRS). It has been a community-based, multi-country project involvingmore than eight thousand children from Brazil, Ghana, India, Norway, Oman, and the United States. The children were selected based on an optimum environment for proper growth: recommended infant and young child feeding practices, good healthcare, and mothers who did notsmoke, among others.

Source: WHO

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Does Evidence-based Policymaking Matter?

A key principle in the renewed effort to reduce and eliminate child undernutrition is a commitment by partners to embrace and promote the latest and best evidence available. Overseas Development Institute, a London-based policy and research think tank, provides some important background to the question: does evidence-based policymaking matter?

The idea of using evidence to inform policy is not new. As far back as ancient Greece, Aristotle put forward the notion that different kinds of knowledge should inform rulemaking. This would ideally involve a combination of scientific knowledge, pragmatic knowledge and value-led knowledge (Flyvbjerg, 2001; Ehrenberg, 1999). What is new and interesting however, is the increasing emphasis that has been placed on the concept over the last decade in the UK.

The current debates originated from the medical sector in the UK in the early 1990s, which was promoting the use of evidence-based medicine. Evidence-based policymaking (EBP) has gained political currency since 1997 under the Blair administrations. This signified the entry of a government with a reforming and modernising mandate, which was committed to putting an end to ideologically-driven politics and replacing it instead with rational decision making. They made a bold commitment towards the use of evidence in policy decision making with their White Paper in 1999, Modernising Government (Cabinet Office, 1999). This noted that government must 'produce policies that really deal with problems; that are forward looking and shaped by the evidence rather than a response to short-term pressures; that tackle causes not symptoms'.

Read the full article here.

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WHO: Malnutrition is the challenge...

Challenges

• Poor nutrition contributes to 1 out of 2 deaths (53%) associated with infectious diseases among children aged under five in developing countries (see graph)
• 1 out of 2 children in Africa with severe malnutrition dies during hospital treatment due to inappropriate care
• 1 out of 4 preschool children suffers from under-nutrition, which can severely affect a child's mental and physical development
• Under-nutrition among pregnant women in developing countries leads to 1 out of 6 infants born with low birth weight. This is not only a risk factor for neonatal deaths, but also causes learning disabilities, mental, retardation, poor health, blindness and premature death.
• Inappropriate feeding of infants and young children are responsible for one-third of the cases of malnutrition.
• 1 out of 3 people in developing countries are affected by vitamin and mineral deficiencies and therefore more subject to infection, birth defects and impaired physical and psycho-intellectual development.
• Zinc deficiencies: magnitude unknown but likely to prevail in deprived populations; associated with growth retardation, diarrhoea and immune deficiency
• 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS are exposed to an increased risk of food insecurity and malnutrition, especially in poor settings, which may further aggravate their situation.

Source: World Health Report 2005

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Better nutrition education helps reduce malnutrition

The Food and Agriculture Organisation provides nutrition education materials which equip people with the knowledge and information to make healthy food choices for their families:

Eating well is vital for a healthy and active life, but many people in virtually all countries do not eat well because of poverty and a lack of nutrition education, according to FAO. “To be food secure, families need sufficient resources to produce or purchase adequate food,” said FAO Nutrition Officer Peter Glasauer. “However, this does not guarantee good nutrition and health as we can see from the diet-related health problems among even more affluent population groups. People also need an understanding of what constitutes an appropriate diet for good health, and they must have the skills and motivation to make the best food choice available to them.”

Find out more at from FAO here.    Read more...

Malnutrition Crisis in Somali, Ethiopia

"Children are dying every day in the Somali region of east Ethiopia where rains have failed and food is scarce, victims of the malnutrition that is affecting tens of thousands of children across the country."    Read more...

A "Green Revolution" for Africa

Secretary-General Kofi Annan's opening remarks at high-level event on "Innovative approaches to meeting the hunger millennium development goal in Africa". Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 5 July 2004

Prime Minister Meles, President Konare, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are here together to discuss one of the most serious problems on earth: the plague of hunger that has blighted hundreds of millions of African lives -- and will continue to do so unless we act with greater purpose and urgency.
The numbers are all-too-familiar. Nearly a third of all men, women and children in sub-Saharan Africa are severely undernourished. Africa is the only continent where child malnutrition is getting worse rather than better.
Tragically, the past decade has seen very little progress. For dozens of countries, the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by the year 2015 seems more a far-off fantasy than an achievable target.
Moreover, the AIDS pandemic is exacerbating the hunger crisis by robbing the continent of a generation of farmers. In Africa, fighting hunger and fighting AIDS must go hand in hand.
But we have not come together to rattle off statistics, or to recount our collective failures. We are here to discuss a way forward. We are here as part of a movement for the rural and agricultural transformation of our beloved continent.

Excellencies,

Hunger is a complex crisis. To solve it we must address the interconnected challenges of agriculture; health care; nutrition; adverse and unfair market conditions; weak infrastructure; and environmental degradation.
In Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, a green revolution tripled food productivity and helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of hunger. Africa has not yet had a green revolution of its own.
This is partly because the scientific advances that worked so well elsewhere are not directly applicable to Africa. Here, we produce a wide and different variety of food crops. African farmers use a range of farming systems, and depend largely on rain-fed agriculture rather than irrigation, leaving them vulnerable to climatic shocks.
African farmers also face much higher transport costs. The soils in which they toil have become severely depleted of nutrients. Erosion, deforestation and biodiversity loss also take a toll. As Norman Borlaug, the father of the Asian Green Revolution, once said, “no one can be an environmentalist with an empty stomach.”
The burden is borne by all of society, but women are on the front lines. Women do the lion's share of Africa's farming. It is they who grow, process and prepare the continent's food. It is they who gather water and wood. It is they who care for people suffering from AIDS. Yet women lack adequate access to credit, technology, training and services. They are also denied legal rights – including, of all things, the right to own land.
Africa's women and girls also suffer disproportionately in terms of nutrition. And often, after marrying early, they give birth to low-weight babies because they themselves are undernourished. Thus the plight of poverty and disease is carried forward to the next generation. We are here today to end this pattern, and to ensure that Africa's children enjoy a different inheritance.

Excellencies,

The world has fallen terribly short in implementing the plan of action adopted at the World Food Summit in 1996. Africa in particular has been unable to break free of recurrent hunger crises.
That is why I have challenged the world's scientists and scholars to give us their ideas, innovations, and intensity, and called on them to rally round the cause of food security and agricultural development in Africa. Today, as various stakeholders present their proposals, we can begin to see the fruit of their labours.
Two years ago, I asked the InterAcademy Council to come up with a plan for preventing famines and eliminating hunger for many millions of people in Africa. Last week, the Council put forward a powerful set of ideas that focus in particular on building strong scientific and technical institutions for agriculture – not as an afterthought, but as a strategic goal.
The Council is also stressing the need not just for a single green revolution, but for a number of “rainbow evolutions” that will respond to a wide range of challenges. I urge you to listen closely to the Council's presentation later today.
I also called on the formidable expertise of the United Nations Millennium Project's Task Force on Hunger. Its recommendations are far-reaching and refreshingly concrete. They call on countries to adopt national action plans with six main components: improving agricultural productivity; enhancing nutrition; promoting market access; restoring degraded farming landscapes; empowering women and increasing spending on agriculture.
These initiatives and their recommendations are fully in step with the approach endorsed by the World Food Summit, which calls for long-term agricultural and rural development, and short-term help for the needy. Perhaps most importantly, they are not wishful thinking. Quite the contrary, they are the product of rigorous analysis and experience. Given the right kind of national and international support, Africa can achieve the 21st-century green revolution it needs.
What would such a revolution look like?

• We would see proven techniques in small-scale irrigation and water harvesting scaled up to provide more crop-per-drop.
• We would see improved food crops, developed through publicly funded research focused specifically on Africa.
• We would see soil health restored, through agroforestry techniques and organic and mineral fertilizers.
• We would see rural productivity increased by electrification and access to information technologies, such as cell phones.
• We would have social safety nets – from grain reserves to early warning systems – that protect the most vulnerable.

This list could, of course, go on. But taken one by one, such solutions are bound to remain inadequate.
It makes little sense to help with soils and water, while leaving impoverished villages without improved roads, energy or seeds.
And few productivity improvements will be achieved if soils are healthy but farm families continue to die of preventable and treatable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria.
We must also not shy away from considering the potential of biotechnology, which can contribute significantly to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, but which must be developed judiciously and used with adequate and transparent safety measures.
Success will require each African government to commit itself wholeheartedly to the Millennium Development Goals, by developing national strategies consistent with the timeline and targets for 2015.
We will need more convincing action from the developed countries to support those strategies: by phasing out harmful trade practices, by providing technical assistance, and by increasing both the volume of aid to levels consistent with the Goals, and the percentage invested in agriculture, which is half what it was two decades ago.
And we will need close partnerships, with the African Union, the New Partnership for Africa's Development, civil society, the private sector and, of course, African farmers.
Most of all, success will require a political breakthrough. As today's presentations will show, knowledge is not lacking. The basic policy directions are well established and widely accepted. What is lacking, as ever, is the will to turn this knowledge into practice.
So let us show the meaning of global solidarity.
Let us all do our part to help Africa's farmers and their families take their first steps out of chronic poverty, and to help societies make a decisive move towards balanced and sustainable development.
Let us generate a uniquely African green revolution – a revolution that is long overdue, a revolution that will help the continent in its quest for dignity and peace.
And let us never again allow hunger, needless hunger, to ravage lives and the future of a continent.
I pledge the full support of the United Nations system. And I thank all those who have worked to make today's event possible, including the Government and people of Ethiopia who have welcomed us so warmly into their midst.

Thank you very much.    Read more...

Child undernutrition: "Leading contributor to global disease burden."

Dr.Laura Caulfield writes:

"Undernutrition is the underlying cause of more than 53 percent of all child deaths that occur annually, including those from infectious diseases, pneumonia, diarrhea, measles and malaria, according to a new analysis by researchers with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the World Health Organization. Childhood undernutrition, defined as underweight or low-weight-for-age, is the leading risk factor contributing to the global burden of disease."

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How Women’s Status Determines Child Nutrition

The Importance of Women’s Status for Child Nutrition in Developing Countries, from the International Food Policy Research Institute, arrives at key insights into the nature of the child hunger and undernutrition in South Asia:

...researchers began to ponder the Asian Enigma - the question of why malnutrition is much more prevalent among children in South Asia than in Sub-Saharan Africa, even though South Asia surpasses Sub-Saharan Africa in most of the principal determinants of child nutrition. This report uses data from 36 countries in three developing regions to establish empirically that women's status, defined as women's power relative to men's, is an important determinant of children's nutritional status... Where women's status is low, this research proves unequivocally that policies to eradicate gender discrimination not only benefit women but also their children.

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