Improving the nutrition status of children and women

Current high world food prices serve as a reminder of the vulnerability of large parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to hunger and undernutrition. Good nutrition status for children and adolescent girls is fundamental for attaining many of the Millennium Development Goals. Despite this, donors and governments underinvest in interventions to improve nutrition.

This issue of id21 insights argues that this underinvestment is due to a lack of incentives for donors; few take a strategic approach to investments that have the potential to improve nutrition and they have little idea whether current investments are making a difference. Furthermore, their ‘critical friends’ – research institutes and non-governmental organisations – lack the leadership to engage with donors strategically on this issue.

Articles included tackle issues such as:

• Why is undernutrition not a higher priority for donors?
• public-private sector partnerships
• the price of hunger – the relationship between poverty and food intake
• child undernutrition in Africa
• increased donor investment needed
• nutrition for mothers and children
• What can be done to accelerate progress against undernutrition?

It is argued that nutrition of the world’s children and women desperately needs improving. Failure to do so violates their human rights and will undermine development today and in the next generation. If undernourished children survive their first few months of life, they will suffer more illness, learn less in school and be less productive in the workforce. In turn, their children are more likely to be born undernourished.

The authors suggest that this desperate cycle can only be broken by a new alliance between donors, governments and critical friends. This will require new leaders to come forward and develop politically aware strategies that raise public consciousness and put human and financial resources, both public and private, to effective use.