What is the Child Nutrition Fund?

An ambitious new initiative led by UNICEF aims to prevent and treat malnutrition in women and children by rapidly scaling up finance and solutions to the issue — and coordinating among global donors so that they can target their investments in nutrition more effectively. Despite various efforts to reduce child malnutrition, the number of children worldwide suffering from wasting — a severe form of malnutrition where children become weak and emaciated — has been rising since 2016, affecting an estimated 45 million children in 2022, according to UNICEF. The effects on their bodies and brains can be lifelong and irreversible. What’s more, two-thirds of children worldwide, or over 400 million, are undernourished. The Child Nutrition Fund, which launched in 2022 and began operating last November, is a financing mechanism that fast-tracks policies, programs, and resources on malnutrition while also seeking long-term solutions. It partners with governments, local organizations, and other global institutions. It aims to raise $2 billion by 2030 in order to reach 350 million women and children in 23 countries, primarily in Africa and Asia, with the most children under 5 years old who experience wasting. So far it has raised nearly $270 million. It also hopes to mobilize $1.5 billion in domestic financing by matching national governments’ funding in this area. And the fund is already hard at work. For example, last year, while the fund was still in pilot phase, it launched a $30 million matching fund to support child malnutrition and immunization in Ethiopia in partnership with the country’s government, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. In the Gates Foundation’s annual Goalkeepers report, released Tuesday, Bill Gates recommended investing in the Child Nutrition Fund as one of four high-impact, low-cost solutions the world should invest in to tackle the problem of child malnutrition. “Before the Child Nutrition Fund, there was no dedicated platform to coordinate efforts to address child malnutrition, to encourage domestic funding, or to support local production of the nutrient-rich foods and food supplements children need most,” the report writes. “The Child Nutrition Fund provides solutions to all three of these problems, in one place.” The Gates Foundation helped launch the fund, along with CIFF and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office. The Child Nutrition Fund is inspired by financing mechanisms such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria — a highly effective effort that rapidly scaled and has saved nearly 60 million lives since its founding in 2002. Gates also helped launch the Global Fund. The Child Nutrition Fund is led by UNICEF’s headquarters in New York, with a secretariat at its headquarters in Brussels. Staff in the agency’s regional and national offices carry out its operations. Coordinating across groups One of the biggest potential benefits of the fund is that it can coordinate various initiatives in the nutrition space. Aggregated financing can prevent fragmentation and ensure a unified approach to supporting countries’ nutrition programs, said Dr. Rasa Izadnegahdar, who leads the maternal, newborn, child nutrition and health portfolio within the gender equality division at the Gates Foundation. “I think one of the biggest challenges we face is an insufficiency of the political prioritization of nutrition,” he said in a call with reporters last week. Existing responses are often inefficient, given competing priorities such as increasing conflict, inequity, and climate-driven crises. Furthermore, the short-term nature of funding cycles — in which funds are available only during emergencies and targeted at treatment — isn’t effective at preventing child wasting in the first place, according to UNICEF. Wasting doesn’t happen when women and children have access to nutritious diets. Furthermore, malnutrition is an underlying risk factor across many health conditions, Izadnegahdar said. And improving nutrition boosts vaccine response and reduces mortality from diarrheal diseases, pneumonia, and malaria, with long-term resilience to infections throughout life. According to the World Health Organization, malnutrition is the underlying cause of nearly half of preventable child deaths, and "hidden hunger" affects 30% of the global population, primarily children and women, due to deficiencies in essential vitamins and minerals. The Child Nutrition Fund is aligned with the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting, a road map for countries to achieve U.N. Sustainable Development Goal targets on wasting and undernutrition. The fund is making important early progress, Izadnegahdar said. It has already started mobilizing in countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria in the areas of child and maternal undernutrition by purchasing and procuring essential nutrition commodities. Furthermore, in Bangladesh and Indonesia, the fund’s support “will allow national programs to progressively reach universal coverage of all pregnant women with multiple micronutrient supplements—in what would become two of the largest maternal nutrition programs for the prevention of maternal anemia and low birthweight in the world,” Víctor Aguayo, UNICEF’s director of child nutrition and development, wrote in the Goalkeepers report. UNICEF declined an interview for this story. Additional benefits “The Child Nutrition Fund does a few things that we've been long wanting to see,” said Andy Rigsby, the Gates Foundation’s senior program officer of global policy and advocacy. First, it incentivizes domestic investment in nutrition by ensuring that for every dollar, naira, or peso a country invests, it receives double the value in products or services, which boosts the scale and reach of programs, Rigsby said. To date, the fund has matched over $16 million in domestic resources across multiple countries in Africa and Asia. Second, the fund increases coordination and transparency among donors, ensuring resources are efficiently aligned with country priorities. Lastly, Rigsby emphasizes the fund’s role in improving financing for the production and supply of essential nutrition products. For example, as wasting rates increased throughout the global food crisis, Rigsby told Devex they were able to secure enough ready-to-use therapeutic food for 5 million children by accelerating its production, preventing stock shortages in various countries. “No countries stocked out of RUTFs due to lack of supply, and to my knowledge that's the first time that's been the case,” Rigsby said. By combining global donor resources with domestic leadership and tackling supply chain issues, “we're seeing some really exciting acceleration on this overall agenda,” he added. Fundraising goals To date, the Gates Foundation has invested $70 million in the Child Nutrition Fund. This includes an initial $20 million in September 2022 to support the inclusion of preventative nutrition products in the fund, followed by $50 million in November 2022 to help local therapeutic food manufacturers scale up production. FCDO, meanwhile, has committed a total of £24.3 million to the fund — which is part of a larger £1.5 billion investment to address the nutrition needs of mothers, babies, and children from 2022 to 2030. “As a co-founder of the Child Nutrition Fund, the UK government will continue to keep the spotlight on this important issue," an FCDO spokesperson said. Looking ahead, the CNF plans to mobilize $3.4 billion annually in global and domestic expenditures to meet its targets: $1.1 billion for child malnutrition prevention, $550 million for women’s malnutrition, and $1.6 billion for treating severe malnutrition in children, the Gates Foundation told Devex. The $3.4 billion goal includes CNF funds, global donors, domestic financing, and international institutions. Izadnegahdar said they are actively pursuing other philanthropists and bilateral partners as well. Prenatal vitamins Among the Child Nutrition Fund's focuses is multiple micronutrient supplements, or prenatal vitamins, which aim to replace traditional iron-folic acid supplements. A new formulation of prenatal vitamins supported by the U.N. provides 13 additional micronutrients that improve maternal health and fetal development, and reduce low birth weight, newborn mortality, and stillbirths, Izadnegahdar said. The Child Nutrition Fund helps countries adopt these products by providing match financing and programmatic support, aiming to integrate them into national health systems and reduce barriers to access. Izadnegahdar also said that after efforts to reduce costs, the new multiple-micronutrient supplement is now priced the same as traditional iron-folic acid supplements and is ready to be integrated into health systems to improve antenatal care. This supplement is more effective at treating anemia because it addresses multiple micronutrient deficiencies, which often cause the condition, he added. It also costs just $2.60 to support a full pregnancy.