KATHMANDU, SEPTEMBER 18
Despite progress, South Asia has over one-third of the world's stunted children (nearly 54 million) and over 25 million children suffer from wasting.
UNICEF today kicked off a three-day regional conference on nutrition in Kathmandu with the aim of scaling up equitable nutritional care for girls and women in South Asia.
Organised by UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia, the conference is being attended by government representatives, development partners, researchers, jurists and stakeholders fromSouth Asia.
Issuing a press release today, UNICEF said women's nutrition is central to breaking the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition in South Asia. The region is home to one-third of the world's undernourished children, according to the UNICEF report on 'Undernourished and Overlooked.' Likewise, one in five women in South Asia are underweight, and one in two are anaemic. UNICEF's report also shows that the regions with the highest levels of maternal undernutrition also contain the highest number of child undernutrition.
"We need to work collectively and make sure that the nutrition of women and children is at the centre of the national development agenda," said Sanjay Wijesekera, regional director of UNICEF South Asia, at the inauguration of the conference. He also stressed that good nutrition is essential to help girls and women thrive and succeed in life.
At the same time, a mother's nutrition health has a direct and critical impact on her child. This is why child undernutrition crisis in South Asia can't be solved without addressing girls' and women's undernutrition.
In the recent years, national governments across all the countries of South Asia have made concerted efforts to address undernutrition among children and women.
However, the progress is too slow, and successes have been uneven and not shared equally among and within the countries. The situation was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, incessant and escalating conflicts and natural disasters and the current economic downturn.
"Incorporating the delivery of nutrition interventions within health, food and social protection systems has the potential to achieve maximum impact. Only then can we address under-nutrition in children together with malnutrition in adolescent girls, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers," Wijesekera added.
One out of every four women (307 million) of reproductive age suffers from micronutrient deficiencies in South Asia. Around 63 per cent of children under the age of five experience stunted growth during the first six months of life. This is the critical period known as the first 500 days of a child's life when a child is entirely reliant on the mother for nourishment.
Adolescent girls and women from the poorest households are twice as likely to suffer from underweight as those from the wealthiest households. The disparities among the urban and rural poor families are the worst.
A version of this article appears in the print on September 19, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
