The 2018 Global Nutrition Report provides an insight into the global scenario of malnutrition today in the context of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition 2016-2025 and the Sustainable Development Goals that sustain the impetus to address the challenges of malnutrition and thereby expedite progress. Currently, the progress that has been made in recent years is too slow and inconsistent. However, it does present an unprecedented opportunity to end malnutrition in all its manifestations that must be seized in order to achieve the goals under Zero Hunger and ameliorate the risk of any reversal of gains made.
Stunting amongst children has declined globally and there has been a slight decrease in the number of underweight women. Many countries will achieve at least one of the global targets to track progress on nutritional status by 2025. Moreover, the level of game-changing knowledge and data, along with the governance, policies, targets and plans of stakeholders that define their political will, have never been better placed to deliver results. The advances made in data have enabled us to consolidate our understanding of the nature and causes of the burden of malnutrition and can guide/inspire action as well as improve the abilities to track progress.
The 2018 Global Nutrition Report focuses on the collation of existing data and the conduct of novel innovations in data analysis across five areas, wherein the progress made needs to be consolidated and major gaps in action need to be filled. These include the burden of malnutrition, its emerging areas needing focus, diets as a common cause of all forms of malnutrition, financing nutrition action and global commitments.
The five critical steps outlined by the Report include:
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Breaking down the silos and developing comprehensive programmes: integrating approaches across populations to tackle different forms of malnutrition efficiently and effectively. This entails pooling scarce resources, varied expertise and innovative/diverse tools to become transformative in ensuring that nutrition actions work “double duty” to tackle more than one form. For example, interventions in under-nutrition in early life can address obesity and NCDs in later life.
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Prioritizing and investing in the required data and the capacity to use it: informing the nutrition responses by designing actions for impact, based on geospatial data that provides adequate understanding of who is affected by malnutrition and why. In addition to filling the gaps in micronutrient data, all the stakeholders must also develop the capacity to use it to make evidence-based policy decisions regarding the interventions.
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Scaling up and diversifying financing for nutrition: Domestic and international investments in adequate and appropriate funds can help innovate and build on past progress. Those in control of the funding streams and resource flows must ensure that these are traceable and transparent as well as are focused on ensuring that nutrition plans are delivered in practice. These include the governments, multilateral organisations, investors and philanthropic foundations who need to develop innovative financing methods and provide the requisite institutional and human capacity for nutrition action.
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Focusing on healthy diets to drive better nutrition everywhere: Suboptimal diets pose major risks to countries everywhere vis-à-vis disease, disability and death globally. Governments and business need to implement a holistic package of actions to ensure food systems and food environments are delivering healthy diets that are affordable, accessible and desirable for all. Efforts by communities, cities and city networks must be scaled up and barriers broken down based on past successes or lessons learnt elsewhere.
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Making and delivering better targets and commitments requires an ambitious and transformative approach to meet global nutrition targets: Only SMART commitments designed for impact that signatories consistently report on and deliver will be fit for purpose to end malnutrition in all its forms. The global community i.e. donors, national governments and business must renew commitments, hold themselves accountable and expedite the critical steps needed to end malnutrition in all its forms.
Thus, the rationale of the 2018 Global Nutrition Report is to spur national and global action on nutrition by highlighting the fact that the burden of malnutrition today is unacceptably high and the progress made till date is simply not good enough. Every country in the world is affected and this is holding back progress everywhere. Although the world is off track, the chance to end malnutrition as well as the duty to take action has never been greater.
India Outbound
December 3, 2018
source https://indiaoutbound.org/the-2018-global-nutrition-report-key-findings/
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