NUTRITION AND POVERTY: RAISE THE MOTHERS AND THE CHILDREN WILL FOLLOW

By Jay Naidoo and - - Reprint | | Print |

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JOHANNESBURG, Nov 2 2011 (IPS) - For the next 1000 days, 75 million African children will be in the most critical development period of their lives.

Science has shown that this early phase has a major impact on the future of a child, her community, and her nation. If her mother is well nourished, she has a much better chance of surviving her first months of life. If she is breast-fed for the first six months and then receives nutritious baby foods containing essential vitamins and minerals until the age of two, she is more likely to complete her education, have a higher IQ, and earn up to 46 percent more over her lifetime.

In fact, a child’s height at the age of two is the single best predictor of human capital. Incredibly, half of the failure to grow in the first two years occurs during pregnancy.

It is for this reason that the United Nations 6th Report on the World Nutrition Situation calls for a renewed effort to invest in maternal nutrition to break the intergenerational cycle of growth failure.

It is well documented that growth failure is transmitted across generations through the mother. Small adult women are more likely to have low birth-weight babies. In turn, children born with a low birth weight are more likely to have growth failure during childhood and become small adult women.

This intergenerational cycle can be broken by improving access to quality nutrition especially by focusing interventions on women of child-bearing age, including adolescent girls.

By improving her reserves of critical nutrients, such as iron and folic acid, in preparation for pregnancy, we can mitigate the risk of her dying during pregnancy, and protect her baby from debilitating and often deadly birth defects.

Birth weight can be rapidly improved, even in populations of short adult women. Improving diet can help achieve this. In fact, assuring quality maternal nutrition is as close as we can come to a clear pathway out of the nutrition-poverty trap.

We face an unprecedented point in history in which resource scarcity, population growth, and the development of emerging markets will combine to create a systemic security threat, upending longstanding institutions and international relationships that serve as the foundation of global security.

What is required to address these challenges are new ways of collaborating across sectors, with civil society leading the way, demanding better leadership and accountability from our governments to establish a just society where every mother and her child has access to quality health care, adequate nutrition, and laws that protect her rights.

To achieve these ambitious goals, we will need to work creatively through both market and public sector approaches to maximise the impact of our efforts and investments and create the much needed efficiencies in our public service delivery models, generating better value for money.

In truth, there will not be enough public funding to support the growing challenges to our health system, such as those related to HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, maternal and child health or the emerging public health epidemic which includes chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

There is an inter-dependency between health, nutrition, livelihoods, food security, and HIV which challenges us to make smarter policy decisions on the ways we can approach and finance these priorities and how we can leverage markets to work better for the poor.

Highlighting the importance of using nutrition as a proxy indicator for development, a recent Harvard study demonstrated that attained height is a strong indicator of a woman’s socioeconomic status and of the health, well-being, and economic potential of her children. Of the 54 countries included in the study, women’s height declined in 14 countries, all in Africa, and stayed the same in 21. Researchers attribute the declines or stagnation to poor nutrition, exposure to infections, and other environmental factors that may stunt or hamper children’s growth.

When we think of 2030, and the opportunities Africa will pose to its next generation of leaders, we must keep in mind that the mothers of the 75 million African children, now in their critical 1000-day development period.

Investing in the future of our youth by ensuring they are adequately nourished will not only help break the cycle of poverty but also empower them with the potential to raise the continent of Africa. Small changes in woman’s attained height generate significant returns for her children, her village, and her nation. We know that our children will reach new heights on the shoulders of their mothers. Raise the mothers and the children will follow. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Jay Naidoo is Chairman of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)