Pakistan’s silent crisis

Malnutrition is estimated to decrease Pakistan’s GDP by 2 to 3% and equates to billions of lost rupees every year.

Nearly half of all children under five in Pakistan are chronically undernourished. This is worse than in many African countries. One in 20 stunted children in the world live in Pakistan. Pakistan is totally off-track and will not come close to achieving MDG1 — to eradicate extreme hunger.

The new government must seize the opportunity right now to change this.

Malnutrition leaves children more vulnerable to disease, stunts their mental and physical development and leads to lifelong learning and memory deficiencies, lower IQ, and poorer achievement at school.

They will not be able to work as hard or earn as much as their healthy peers — earning up to 46 per cent less in adulthood. This means a less productive and innovative workforce, which hurts national productivity and, in turn, hampers Pakistan’s economic growth.

The costs are huge. Malnutrition is estimated to decrease Pakistan’s GDP by two to three per cent and equates to billions of lost rupees every year. This is similar to the lost GDP caused by the energy crisis.

If action is taken now, the newly elected government can reverse this. Pakistan’s population is expected to increase by 50 per cent in less than 40 years. If healthy and well educated, this youth offers a vast mine of talent and productivity. If properly nourished, they will learn more, work harder, be more innovative, and increase productivity, unlocking Pakistan’s economic potential on the global stage.

The first 1,000 days, from the start of a woman’s pregnancy to the child’s second birthday, is the vital window which will shape a child’s entire life. The damage caused by malnutrition in this window is long-term and permanent. Good nutrition for these first 1,000 days is a prerequisite for success in school and in life. Properly nourished children are more likely to take up skilled jobs and boost their wages — enabling them to lift themselves, their family, and ultimately their community out of poverty. Nutrition must be prioritised and tackled — as both a moral and economic necessity.

Tackling global malnutrition is a priority for the UK government and the World Bank. The World Bank is chairing a group of international partners in Pakistan, including the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), AusAid, UN agencies, NGOs, and others, focused on helping federal and provincial governments prioritise ending under-nutrition. The group has provided technical and financial support and the World Bank has set up a multimillion dollar trust fund to support scaling-up of approaches that have been proven to work to address malnutrition.

On June 8, the UK announced hundreds of millions of pounds to tackle malnutrition globally, leveraging funding from others amounting to more than $4 billion at the Nutrition for Growth summit, co-hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron. At the summit, a radical new approach was agreed with governments, business and science to transform millions of lives and prevent stunting in 20 million children globally by 2020, with the ultimate aim of eradicating malnutrition.

The UK government and the World Bank are significantly increasing their development financing for nutrition, including in Pakistan. The World Bank and the UK via DFID are already working with the provincial governments to help them provide micronutrient supplements to prevent anaemia and other micronutrient deficiencies in pregnancy and early childhood, to improve treatment of diarrhoea in young children, to promote exclusive breastfeeding up to six months and appropriate feeding for young children and to improve treatment for severe acute childhood malnutrition.

The UK is exploring how we can improve nutrition for hundreds of thousands of the poorest women and children through our support to the Income Support Programme. We are also exploring ways to help improve fortification of staple foods with iron, folic acid and other micronutrients.

And we help in emergencies. Back in 2010, the UK provided high-energy food supplements to half a million malnourished children and pregnant women affected by the devastating floods, and again provided seeds and animals in 2011 and 2012 so people could feed themselves. The World Bank financed emergency cash transfers to flood-affected households, which allowed families to meet their nutritional needs during those difficult times.

When it comes to the challenges for the new government in Pakistan, there has been good progress. In April, Pakistan signed up to the global Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement. This is a major step forward, as it commits Pakistan to improve the life chances of children by ensuring they have good quality nutrition in the crucial 1,000-day window of opportunity from pregnancy to age two. It is now a challenge for the new government to take this forward, not just through the health sector, but also through initiatives in education, agriculture, water and sanitation, support for the poorest and other interventions.

Devolution of the relevant ministries to the provinces following the Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment presents an opportunity for provinces to take forward their own approaches on nutrition. The provinces, with technical support from development partners, have since developed strategies which clearly outline what actions need to be taken to address maternal and child malnutrition. Financing is currently being secured to implement these, from the provinces’ own budgets, as well as from development partners like AusAid, DFID and the World Bank.

So after decades of stagnation on nutrition, we are starting to see serious action being taken globally and here in Pakistan.

By taking action now, the new Government of Pakistan can change hundreds of thousands of children’s lives, as well as lay the foundations for a healthy, well-educated, and productive workforce, which will boost growth, lift millions out of poverty and help Pakistan compete globally.

The time is now to map out a better blueprint for Pakistan’s future.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 15^th, 2013.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.