Hungry generation

The figures that indicate the battle aren’t changing much. In five year, prevalence of malnutrition dropped only one point—from 42% in 2003 to 41% in 2008, according to the National Demographic Health Survey.That’s how much national figures show until the next NDHS is released this year. But the figures are already in and the crunched […]

The figures that indicate the battle aren’t changing much. In five year, prevalence of malnutrition dropped only one point—from 42% in 2003 to 41% in 2008, according to the National Demographic Health Survey.
That’s how much national figures show until the next NDHS is released this year. But the figures are already in and the crunched numbers look even worse, experts with access to the yet-to-be published survey worry.
The worry is that wasting—acute malnutrition, another indicator of child nutrition other than stunting (chronic malnutrition)—is even higher than previous surveys show.
An interim multiple indicator cluster survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics shows nearly 34.8% prevalence of stunting among children. Even bleaker figures are expected in NDHS 2013.
Depressing malnutrition figures show programmes in health, agriculture and nutrition are “all parallel”, says Dr Philippa Momah of the Civil Society Alliance for Scaling up Nutrition in Nigeria (CSA-SUN).
The programmes have no meeting point where Safiya becomes a focus. Enter Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture (NSA). Simply put, it is agriculture sensitive to nutritional needs of children, families, communities.
Take fish, identified as nutritionally important in growing children. The thrust is to encourage women to rear them.
“The logic is that if you rear it, you will eat it and it is easier than looking for money to buy it,” explains Dr Omo Ohiokpehai, an adviser to the agriculture minister.
Addressing a roundtable on NSA convened by the charity Save the Children, she said a further thrust would be getting industry to mass produce those foods identified as important and push into public consciousness.
Such foods, once taken up by industry, could potentially impact school feeding and infant and young-child nutrition programmes.
NSA is more than just food—and goes beyond a national target to dump 20 million metric tonnes of extra food into production by 2015. In 2012, some eight million metric tonnes of food were added into domestic food supply, says Dr Jide Olumeko, director of strategic grains reserve department at the federal agriculture ministry.
But nutrition goes beyond food.
“There is lot of information we need to encourage in the way we do agriculture,” says Ohiokpehai. “High income and increased production cannot improve nutrition.”
NSA faces a major problem in Nigeria and in countries it has been tried—the dominance of staple crops, says Hugh Bagnall-Oakeley, hunger and nutrition policy adviser for Save the Children.
Staples—sorghum, cassava, rice—dominate the Nigerian diet and are nutritionally poor, compared with more protein- and vitamin-packed foods.
The rub with NSA is diversifying enterprise in such a way as to include other crops and enterprise—livestock, fish—that could serve up richer foods and remain profitable.
Profitable, because production has to be able to pay for other items families need.
With push for increased productivity a priority, NSA “is not going against commercialization as it seems,” says Bagnall-Oakeley. “But within that increased commercialization, how do you balance nutrition demands?”
The key is to balance economic growth and optimal nutrition. There is no template for what communities might choose, but pushing aside proper nutrition could cost in stunted children and hampered cognitive development, producing what experts refer to as 30-year-old men with ten-year-old brains.
Malnutrition, according to an assessment, costs Ethiopia 16.5% of its gross domestic product every year. Experts believe the cost for Nigeria could be even more.
“We owe it to our children and the future of Nigeria to provide better nutrition so that Nigeria can properly express its potential,” urged Olumeko.
“We need to develop diets that provide all the nutrients required for normal growth on a daily basis. We need to develop a diverse diet, a diet that puts nutritious foods on the table.”
An estimated “10.9 million children under age five are stunted by malnutrition, meaning their physical and cognitive development is impaired and they are unable to reach their full potential,” according to the Nutrition Society of Nigeria.
Second after India, continued malnutrition could “undermine future [national] earning potential by as much as 20% and inhibit economic growth by as much as 3% of gross domestic product,” says NSN president, Dr Ngozi Nnam.
The children who form the core of stunted percentages from 2003 and 2008 are likely grown into adults, but what quality of adults could be questionable. As could be Safiya.