Opinion: Nutrition for resilience — nourishing children in crises

Miora was born in the spring of 2020, in a small village in the Ambovombe-Androy district of southern Madagascar, just before the government announced the first COVID-19 lockdown. This prevented Miora’s mother from accessing the essential health services and balanced nutrition she needed to give her unborn child a good start in life.

After Miora’s difficult birth, a devastating drought and climate related shocks bumped up food prices  drastically, leaving her mother unable to buy enough food or produce enough breast milk for her child. As a result, by her second birthday, Miora was malnourished. She was weak, tired, and she easily fell ill and could not recover. She had already been robbed of a healthy and productive future.

This story is unfortunately far from unique. According to the 2023 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, more than 3.1 billion people worldwide — or 42% of the population — could not afford a healthy diet in 2021. More than 1 in 5 children, or 148.1 million, were estimated to be stunted in 2022. That means, just like in Miora’s case, the chronic undernutrition they suffered during their early childhood will not only cause long-term impairments to their physical and cognitive development, but will also curtail their health, well-being, and economic productivity for the rest of their lives. And that is not even to speak of the negative effect of entire populations who start life malnourished, on the productivity of economies around the world. Nor of its ballooning effect on the cost of health care systems.

Today, about 2 in 3 children under the age of 5 — or 478 million— experience food poverty. This means they do not have the minimum diverse diet needed to grow and develop. An alarming 1 in 3 children under 5 — or 202 million children — are living in severe food poverty with extremely poor diets that include at most two food groups, often cereal and perhaps milk. Most children living in severe food poverty lack nutrient-rich foods such as eggs, fish, poultry, meat, pulses, nuts, fruits, and vegetables. Moreover, gender inequalities further exacerbate challenges with more than half of all food insecure households in rural areas — also facing poor health, lack of clean water, and limited access to education — are headed by women.

Experts are clear: based on current trends, achieving the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and the associated nutrition goals are even farther out of reach in the new normal of escalating global challenges and multiple recurring crises as reported by the Standing Together for Nutrition Consortium. More frequent and intense crises are undermining the resilience of national systems that support nutrition.

The time to act is now

Despite the overwhelming evidence of optimal nutrition in improving overall health, immunity, and productivity, adequate nutrition is generally viewed as an outcome of more resilient populations. It is often neglected in research and development agendas as integral to building resilient societies.  

Nutrition resilience — the ability of nations and their systems to protect nutrition in the face of interconnected challenges — has never been more urgent. Multiple systems, such as food, health, social protection, water sanitation and hygiene, and education, must jointly help prepare, respond, and recover from crises. These efforts must be designed in ways that safeguard the diets, services, and practices and equitable nutrition outcomes of all, especially the most vulnerable.

Beacons of hope

Strong and consistent data exist on a suite of highly cost-effective interventions such as promotion and protection of breastfeeding; food fortification in populations that are nutrition insecure; and biofortification and micronutrient supplements. In addition, opportunities and efforts are underway to transform food systems — making them more resilient and sustainable particularly in the face of climate change.  

Nutrition stakeholders across sectors also provided critical guidance and support to crisis-struck countries. As a result, several Scaling Up Nutrition Movement countries, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, were able to adapt and strengthen the delivery of nutrition interventions across food, health, social protection, and education systems. Countries such as Vietnam, which included nutrition into its emergency plans, and Honduras, which invested in long-term efforts to reduce poverty and food insecurity among the vulnerable communities of the so-called dry corridor, a tropical dry forest region. Guatemala offered another good example of early alert systems to fight malnutrition.

In India, governments at the federal and state level stepped up quickly to expand already existing social protection systems to deliver nutrition interventions to the most vulnerable. Other countries such as Liberia saw strengthened community mobilization helped to minimize disruptions in the delivery of essential health and nutrition services.

Bringing nutrition and resilience to The Hague

Leaders, experts, and advocates will come together this October at The Hague and online at the Micronutrient Forum’s 6th global conference titled Nutrition for Resilience, or N4R, to focus on global food and nutrition crises and share similar lessons of progress — as well as the latest evidence and policy actions required to safeguard and nourish vulnerable communities in a new norm of crises.

Across disciplines, including the latest science, programs, and policies, the conference sessions will bridge nutrition and population resilience on the following pertinent themes:

1. Protecting nutrition in the face of crises, particularly climate change.

2. Strengthening humanitarian development nutrition responses.

3. Women’s nutrition, specifically anemia reduction.

4. Scaling nutrition resilient programs and social protection systems.

5. Optimizing nutrition data systems for improved decision making.

6. Driving innovative partnerships to accelerate progress toward global nutrition and development goals.

Representing a unique opportunity for the international nutrition community to integrate evidence and policy priorities and shape a new collective advocacy agenda, N4R will coalesce delegates to launch a collective road to resilience across global summits, including the SUN Global Gathering in 2024, and to the next Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris.  

Prioritizing and scaling up evidence-based nutrition interventions and investments that strengthen the nutrition resilience of systems, communities, and individuals has never been more urgent to protect the future health, development, and productivity of a cohort of children, including those such as Miora, born into a devastating era of crises.

Join efforts to tackle child malnutrition globally. Register today for Micronutrient  Forum’s 6th global conference Nutrition for Resilience at The Hague, happening in person or online on Oct. 16-20. Learn more on Sept. 12 at a N4R conference preview webinar with global and national leaders.