Transcript

LAWRENCE HADDAD

It is the only independent scorecard. It’s an annual scorecard to say how is the world and all the countries in the world, how are they doing in terms of meeting nutrition goals. But it’s not just about outcomes, it’s also about the things that we do to make those outcomes happen. It’s about how much money we spend, about what policies we put in place, what laws we pass, that kind of thing. So it’s trying to hold everyone accountable, is what you say you do what you actually do, and if not, why not?

There’s one big headline finding really and that’s that commitment really matters. Ending malnutrition is a choice. The number of countries that are on track to meet so-called undernutrition goals is improving every year. Every year we do it more and more countries are doing well. But there are some indicators and some goals that we’re just collectively just doing really badly on.

And then for some outcomes like obesity and overweight, we’re just going in exactly the wrong direction, everything is increasing. We found that about only half the countries out of the 193 actually have the data to be able to track progress against all of the goals we measure. We found some really big blind spots in the nutrition firmament. For example, even though diet and poor quality diet is the number one risk factor in the global burden of disease, there’s no global database on food consumption.

We don’t have very good data on how much countries spend on nutrition. We don’t have very good data on who’s making a commitment and who’s not making a commitment. Now why does that matter? It matters because if we don’t have the data, we can’t hold people accountable. We don’t measure progress if we don’t have the data. So it’s about accountability.

Nutrition matters for people because it’s the bedrock of their existences. If you try to build something on malnutrition, it’s like trying to build a house on quicksand. It affects everything, all the hardware that we have in our bodies. It affects our immune system. It affects the rates at which we grow. It affects our body shape. It affects our brain development.

It affects a whole range of things that allow us to fulfil our potential or not. Some estimates suggest that GDP per capita losses are 10% globally. And that’s the same amount that was lost at the height of the global financial crisis. So being malnourished, that the world’s burden of malnourishment is the same as-- it’s an annual global financial crisis.

It is surprisingly large, but it’s not surprising when you start thinking about what improved nutrition does. So improved nutrition means that you’re much less likely to be living in poverty, means you’re much more likely to be earning a higher wage, starting up your own business, supplying more labour in general in the labour market. When you add that all up at the national level, it can be anything from 6% to 15% additional GNP.

And the investments in nutrition generate a massive return, $16 for every dollar you invest in scaling up nutrition interventions. In addition to the macro effects of improved nutrition and avoiding malnutrition at the household level, there are massive effects. A recent study that we highlight in the report shows that for China, getting a diagnosis of diabetes adds a burden to the household equivalent to 16% of household income. That is just a massive burden.

Where there’s commitment and leadership, action follows. And it’s usually effective action. That’s very important, but it has to be the right action, and it has to be action at three different levels. Increase the coverage of programmes, if you’ve got this great programme but it’s only reaching 10% of the people who needed it, it’s not going to be terribly effective. The second level is make sure your development programmes, all of them, are working, at least in line with and supporting nutrition. And make it harder for people in power to do the wrong thing, or to do nothing. And make it easier for them to do the right thing.

What I’d like to see first of all, I’d like to see all actors come together, because you think about the things that create malnutrition, it’s very powerful forces that come together to create it, and so you need really powerful alliances to overcome it. We can’t do it without governments, but they can’t do it on their own. They need NGOs, they need businesses, they need development banks to come together. Every sector needs to contribute to malnutrition reduction. It’s not just the health sector, it’s not just the agriculture sector, or the food system, it’s all these different sectors

You can do two types of things I guess. One thing is you can act on your own nutrition. You can act for someone in your family. You can act for someone in your community. You can act for someone in your school. But you can also play a very important role in calling out people who have access to power, people who can make decisions.

Again, whether it’s in your school, whether it’s in your clinic, whether it’s in your government, ask your leaders-- those people over there, they’re the same as us, but their nutrition is much better than ours, what’s going on? I think there’s a real opportunity for you to bring the issues of malnutrition higher up the agenda, the national agenda, the development agenda, the international agenda.