Blog: Nutrition for Growth

Monday 10th July 2023

By Sonal Marwah – Senior Policy and Advocacy Adviser (Nutrition)  

Last month marked a decade since the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in London. The Summit brought together governments and institutions from around the world to raise awareness of the importance of good nutrition and to drive action. It sparked the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition, aspiring to end all forms of malnutrition by 2030. The Summit galvanized stakeholders and secured £2.7 billion (USD $4.15 billion) in commitments to combat undernutrition.

Poor nutrition contributes to nearly 45% of child deaths globally. And while important progress has been made over the last decade, malnutrition continues to be a significant threat to children. A perfect storm of increasing inequities, conflict and climate driven crises mean that despite 10 years of efforts to try to reduce child malnutrition, the number of children with wasting (acute malnutrition) continues to persist.

Funding and support for nutrition initiatives, especially for children and women, require urgent attention amid the increasing crises and flatlining resources. Funding for child wasting is usually linked to humanitarian response, making it highly unpredictable, fragmented, and often late. Given the triple threat of Covid, climate and conflict, since 2020 UNICEF has increased our messaging on the urgent need to response to the increasing risks faced by the most vulnerable women and children.

Avoiding a second decade of child wasting

There is no justification for children to die of malnutrition in a world where diets, services and practices that support optimal nutrition can be a reality for all children, adolescents and women. However, in order to make early prevention, detection, and treatment of wasting a reality for every child, requires world leaders to act now and scale up funding in proportion to global needs. And it requires this funding to be delivered in a more sustainable and consistent way.

The UK Government has been a leader on nutrition and a champion of global nutritional investments for over a decade. However, a sharp cut in the Government’s Overseas Development Assistance has curbed the UK’s scale of funding in international development, particularly for nutrition interventions. This comes as worrying levels of the most deadly form of malnutrition, severe wasting, continue to persist across East Africa, Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan. Recognising these dangerous trends, Andrew Mitchell, Minister of State for Development and Africa, is committed towards steering the international community to step up its assistance to mitigate the food and nutrition crisis. On 24 May, with the United Nations and the Governments of the UK, Italy, Qatar, and the United States convened a High-level Pledging Event for the Horn of Africa. Despite the exceptional needs of the region, only $2.4 billion of the $7 billion required was committed.

In the 15 most affected countries, one child every minute is pushed into severe wasting.[1] The scale of the global food and nutrition crisis warrants a transformational shift in the way we respond to protect children from wasting in early childhood, when children are most vulnerable. It requires sustainable funding and nutritional investments in countries facing high-mortality and morbidity and where national Governments lack adequate resources to implement programmes at scale and on time.

Investing in nutrition is smart

Not only is investing in nutrition morally the right thing, it has proven long term benefits for individual well-being, economic and social progress. The 2015 Global Nutrition Report indicated that for every $1 invested in nutrition, $16 is returned to the local economy. Furthermore, according to the Power of Nutrition, 3.7 million lives could be saved by 2025 with the right investments in nutrition.

Since 2000, the world has reduced the proportion of children under 5 suffering from undernutrition by one third and the number of undernourished children by 55 million. This remarkable achievement proves that positive change for nutrition is possible and is happening at scale – but there is more work to be done. In 2020, at least one in three children is not growing well because of malnutrition, and at least two in three are not fed the minimum diet they need to grow, develop and learn to their full potential. That hurts not just children – it hurts us all.

Financing to improve nutrition must be proportionate to global needs. Unless needs and financing are brought together and investments are better targeted, we will continue to lose lives to malnutrition.

Need for leadership on sustainable financing for improving nutrition

In November, 2023 Andrew Mitchell is hosting a Food Security and Nutrition event in London. This presents an opportunity for the UK Government to address the challenge of sustainable financing for improving nutrition, and to spur action for multilateral financial mechanisms.

Given the UK Government’s historic leadership on tackling global malnutrition, the United Kingdom Committee for UNICEF urges the Government to lead on advocating to other governments and financing institutions including the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to prioritise and invest in child wasting. This should be supported with a fully resourced interdisciplinary team within the new Global Health Directorate at FCDO. A sustainable and consistent financing approach to improve nutrition outcomes must be developed with the input of civil society and action coalitions. The approach could complement UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Fund (CNF), which is a coordination effort towards harmonizing sustainable financing streams for nutrition, in development and humanitarian contexts, towards policies, programmes and supplies to mitigate child wasting. In 2021, the UK Government helped establish this Fund with The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF).

The step change required to deliver financing towards predictable, scalable and cost-effective interventions and bring down levels of child wasting, a debilitating and mostly deadly if untreated, requires leadership from political leaders as well as global institutions. Tackling malnutrition must be a cross-party issue, and should be central to all political parties global plans and a priority in party manifestos. This will help save lives now while it has the potential to help build and strengthen health systems that will turn the tide on child survival for years to come.

Conclusion

Child wasting is a preventable tragedy. Tackling it requires a fundamental shift in the way global and national responses to protect children from wasting in early childhood are financed and implemented.

Ten years since the first N4G Summit held in London, the November Food Security and Nutrition event provides an opportunity for the UK Government to once again take a leadership role in tackling one of the world’s most deadly yet preventable problems. Sustainable financing mechanisms for improving nutrition are critical and urgent, and an area where the UK has both experience and expertise, as well as influence. Now is the time to galvanise and align global efforts to prioritise sustainable funding towards reducing the prevalence of child wasting in early life, for every child. Will the UK Government recommit its leadership to spur multilateral efforts to deliver on the SDG target for child wasting to reduce the relevance of child wasting, and in doing so, reduce the number of children in need of treatment?

[1] UNICEF, No Time to Waste – UNICEF’s Acceleration Plan 2022-2023

Image shows boxes of BP-5, nutrition supplies for pregnant and lactating women, are seen in the UNICEF warehouse in Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region in Ethiopia on 20 July 2021.