Recently, social media has been full of posts and articles about rising hunger and malnutrition and whether we can solve them or not — and how or whether billionaires can help end hunger.
Part of our Future of Food Systems series
Find out how we can make food fair and healthy for all. Join the conversation using the hashtag #FoodSystems and visit our The Future of Food Systems page for more coverage.
Feeling hungry is something we all feel several times a day, which reminds us to eat. And people should have food to eat when they feel hungry. When there is nothing to eat, however, the body starts to compromise. This coping mechanism is most prevalent in the most vulnerable people — the youngest and poorest kids.
And in them, we see one of the manifestations of extreme hunger — a condition called severe acute malnutrition. This is a condition that 13.6 million children suffer from, putting them at 11-times greater risk of death than their healthy peers.
Kids who are suffering from SAM are not hungry. They have ceased to be hungry. This is the sort of hunger we must attack first and most aggressively. That sort of hunger we can — and must — end. These little kids will die if we don't act.
No silver bullet
There is no silver bullet to ending hunger. Like all big, complex problems, it requires complex solutions. And we must find those and act.
Severe acute malnutrition cases rise fourfold among children in Tigray
In areas that aid workers can’t reach, at least 33,000 children “are severely malnourished and face imminent death without immediate help," says UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.
But for SAM, there is an effective treatment. Developed in 1996, it’s a $50 treatment involving a course of energy dense sachets called ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF. But 25 years later, only 1 in 3 wasted children have access to this treatment. According to forthcoming research, a lack of financing is the biggest bottleneck to reach these kids with lifesaving treatment. With more financing, sustainable supply chains are possible, and the proliferation of products — including products for prevention of wasting — can help in reducing costs.
MANA Nutrition is a nonprofit RUTF factory based in the United States. It has been producing RUTF for more than a decade, and serving these kids. Like MANA, there are several for-profit and nonprofit companies producing this lifesaving commodity, but there is a need for financing to buy their product. The product will also reach the toughest areas where these kids live only if there is funding for country programs through governments and donors.
How can we overcome this crisis?
We are watching these children slip into an extreme form of malnutrition and suffering, and doing nothing! A simple armband called MUAC — which stands for mid-upper arm circumference — can help early detection of growth faltering.
Energy-dense food; lipid-based nutrient supplements, or LNS; and the treatment of simple, underlying health conditions, including diarrhoea and pneumonia, can put the child back on the path to recovery. These simple prevention and early detection measures should be available everywhere at all times. It is a matter of social justice for these children. When immunization programs are reaching children with lifesaving vaccines, they can test the same kids for growth faltering and support early recovery.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the international community sprang into action, and in a matter of months, we developed multiple vaccines. Amazing. We had the political will and the urgency, so we did it. And the world has come together with an unprecedented rollout. Will the world come together for this pandemic of hungry kids slipping into severe acute malnutrition?
There is a plan to end this crisis called the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting, or GAP, launched in March 2020. This plan was a coordinated effort across five United Nations agencies, namely the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF, and World Food Programme. Under country leadership and commitments, costed country plans are being developed to solve this crisis.
Two partners — the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a philanthropy dedicated to children and UNICEF, the biggest U.N. agency dedicated to children — have joined hands and launched a $100 million fund to support countries’ funding gaps and deliver their costed country plans. The need is massive, however, and both are calling upon donors and individuals to support this initiative.
We know where these children are, we have a strategy, and we have a treatment that works. So what are we waiting for?
Visit the Future of Food Systems series for more coverage on food and nutrition — and importantly, how we can make food fair and healthy for all. You can join the conversation using the hashtag #FoodSystems.
About the authors
Dr. Sufia Askari
Dr. Sufia Askari is the managing director of Sight and Life. She is a medical doctor and a globally recognized public health strategist with almost two decades of experience in policy, technical support, and research, focusing on maternal, newborn, and child health; immunization; nutrition; and food security. She believes in breaking silos to put the mother and child at the center of solutions. Her work with organizations such as UNICEF, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given Sufia the opportunity to lead, design, and implement sustainable nutrition solutions in several countries. She is currently based in London.
Mark Moore
Mark Moore is the co-founder of MANA Nutrition, one of the world’s leading suppliers of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), the front-line defense against severe acute malnutrition. A serial entrepreneur, Mark was an Unreasonable Institute Fellow in Boulder, CO in 2013 where he and others launched Active for Good, an effort to harvest excess calories in the US and send them into 500 calorie packets of RUTF. Active for Good now partners with the US Fund for UNICEF to run UNICEF Kid Power, the first ever fit for good tech platform. Prior to Mana, Mark lived and worked for ten years in Uganda, East Africa where he co-founded the KiboGroup.
Evie Stretch
Evie Stretch is a program officer for evidence to policy and practice at the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, where she supports CIFF's global health and nutrition portfolio. She is an international development professional with program, policy, and advocacy experience in maternal and infant nutrition and food systems in multiple countries.
