News Release

Nutrition has slipped through the gap

Peer-Reviewed Publication

The Lancet_DELETED

Nutrition is a desperately neglected aspect of maternal, newborn, and child health. The reasons for this neglect are understandable but not justifiable. In his Comment which opens The Lancet's Series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition, The Lancet Editor Dr Richard Horton draws together the themes of the series, and calls on agencies, donors and political leaders to step up to this very serious challenge.

He says: “Undernutrition is the largely preventable cause of over a third – 3.5 million – of all child deaths. Stunting, severe wasting and intrauterine growth restriction are among the most important problems. There is a golden interval for intervention: from pregnancy to 2 years of age. After age 2 years, undernutrition will have caused irreversible damage for future development towards adulthood.”

Dr Horton refers to the statistic that four-fifths of undernourished children live in just 20 countries across four regions, and highlights the countries in most immediate need of action – including Burma, Uganda, India, China and South Africa. He discusses various proven interventions in the battle against undernutrition, including breastfeeding counselling, vitamin A supplementation, and zinc fortification. However, he adds: “These interventions need additional programmatic experience about how to achieve full coverage.”

Whilst stating there is no magic technological bullet to solve the problem of undernutrition, Dr Horton calls for long-term investments in the role of women as full and equal citizens – through education, economic, social, and political empowerment. He says this will be the only way to deliver sustainable improvements in maternal and child nutrition, and the health of women and children more generally.

Dr Horton says that the compelling logic of the scientific evidence presented in The Series is that governments need national plans to scale-up nutrition interventions, systems to monitor and evaluate those plans, and laws and policies to enhance the rights and status of women and children. He says: “Although complex and frought with political disagreement, none of these solutions are separable from global treaties and negotiations over trade, agriculture, and poverty reduction.”

In his closing remarks, Dr Horton says: “This latest Lancet Series concludes, not surprisingly perhaps, that the international nutrition system is broken. Leadership is absent, resources are too few, capacity is fragile, and emergency response systems are urgently needed. An agency, donor, or political leader needs to step up to this challenge. There is a fabulous opportunity right now for someone to do so. But who"”

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Notes to editors: Two other comments accompany the Series and are available on request from the Press Office.

The paper associated with this release can be viewed at
http://www.eurekalert.org/jrnls/lance/UndernutritionComment.pdf.


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