Malnutrition menace: ‘The ailment requires social attention’

SUKKUR:

Globally nine million children die each year, almost 19,000 daily, while in Pakistan 350,000 children die every year before their fifth birthday, and 35 per cent of these deaths are due to malnutrition, said Iqbal Detho, the provincial manager advocacy and campaigns of Save the Children, Sindh, at a seminarin Sukkur on Thursday.

According to him, addressing the dilemma of malnutrition was not only medical but requires political and social help as well.

The seminar was organised by Save the Children’s EVERY ONE Campaign, which was supported by Research and Advocacy Fund and the provincial health department.

In the seminar, the participants discussed the situation of malnutrition in Sindh after the 2010 and 2011 floods and suggested that a collaboration of public and private sector with the help of political parties and civil society, including media, could help curb the issue.

The speakers further said that apart from making laws and policies, we need to focus on social taboos that prevail among the society about child being weak by nature and other such beliefs.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2013.