Speaker: Stéphane Doyon
Dear organisers and participants,
My speech will highlight the link between research and nutrition policies. We are facing a very strange situation: The problem of malnutrition continues unabated. It contributes to the deaths of between 3.5 to 5 millions children under 5 years of age every year. In the areas most devastated by malnutrition, no other condition contributes more to death and illness in children.
However, in nutrition, we know what is working and what needs to be done: programmes targeting young children ensuring that they have access to adequate nutrient-rich food and safe growth and development. But despite the progress that research and science did in nutrition, we are developing programmes which we know are inadequate failing to avoid millions of unnecessary death each year.
As a matter of fact, nutrition knowledge has considerably evolved during the last ten years. In emergency situations, this knowledge is applied: thanks to research, a therapeutic food allowing to treat the most severe form of malnutrition has been formulated. This therapeutic food can be locally produced. Thanks to these products severe acute malnutrition can be treated in the community. This approach has already been adopted by over 25 countries and it is recognised and recommended as the best way to manage the most severe form of malnutrition by WHO, WFP and UNICEF. But today only 9 percent of the 20 million children in need get this effective treatment.
But while decades of nutritional science have now been applied to the treatment of children who have dropped into the terminal stages of malnutrition, for children that did not reach this ultimate stage, international food aid applies solutions that are totally inadequate. International food aid does not contain any food adequate for young children. It largely consists of cereal-based porridges made out of Corn Soya Blend. Corn Soya Blend was developed 30 years ago but despite the advances in nutritional science the product remains unchanged. This situation is acknowledged by the World Food Programme, which states in one of its leaflets that Corn Soya Blend or CSB as currently used is not ideal for children under two years old and moderately malnourished children. It indicates that there is an urgent need to develop new, affordable, effective, products to address malnutrition among children in this age group. We cannot continue to implement this bad practice. Food aid needs to change.
Research has firmly established the principles of good nutrition. They centre on good maternal nutrition and exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, followed by the introduction of a nutritious and diverse complementary diet-containing at least some animal source foods, such as milk, meat, or eggs while breast feeding is continued. What needs to happen if we want to apply today’s knowledge to nutritional programming?
Whenever food aid is being distributed it needs to contain adequate food for young children. To this end, the WHO must issue clear minimum nutritional standards, and the composition of food aid baskets must change accordingly. For governments of affected countries, there needs to be a mechanism which supports them financially and technically in setting up effective nutrition programmes. These programmes will target young children and ensure that they have access to adequate food.
Successful examples, such as the Progressa programme in Mexico have shown that this can happen through a mix of providing food supplements and cash transfer. There are two options: provide the cheapest solution or the effective one.
Either we continue with today’s sub-standard approaches, which are driven by an impulse of compassionate aid at cheap cost, and which sacrifice current scientific knowledge and innovations to short-sighted economical considerations. Or we apply nutritional science based on our current knowledge, and reform food aid and help countries setting up effective nutritional support programmes.
We consider that, in this respect, the Global Partnership is not ambitious enough. The Global partnership must explicitly address nutrition. Without explicitly doing so, it will neglect the most vulnerable victims of the current food crisis. There is no escaping the need to increase resources to pay for better food aid and to subsidise national nutrition programmes in the most heavily impacted countries. Thank you very much for you attention.