[pronut-hiv] 'Africa Loses 3 Per Cent GDP to Malnutrition'

["ProNut-HIV" <pronut-hiv@healthnet.org>]

'Africa Loses 3 Per Cent GDP to Malnutrition'

This Day (Lagos)

March 3, 2006 
Etim Imisim
Abuja 

A new report by the World Bank has warned that malnutrition is costing
poor countries up to 3 per cent of their yearly GDP while malnourished
children stand the risk of losing more than 10 per cent of their
lifetime earnings potential.

The report also added that malnutrition increases the risks of HIV
infection and reduces the number of children and mothers who survive
malaria.

A statement from the bank in Washington added that malnutrition and
HIV/AIDS reinforce each other, so the success of HIV/AIDS programmes in
Africa depends in part on paying more attention to nutrition.

The report, released by the bank on Tuesday said that malnutrition has
for long been recognised as a barrier to economic growth but the
development community and governments in the developing world never
found it necessary to tackle it.

A statement, citing the report, said developing countries that invest in
better nutrition for their children get high returns on their spending,
"A group of the world's leading development economists,including three
Nobel Laureates, concluded in a 2004 study known as the Copenhagen
Consensus, that nutrition investments were one of the 'best buys' that
developing countries could make in reducing poverty and improving
economic growth," the statement continued. But contrary to popular
perceptions, malnutrition is not simply the result of having too little
food to eat as many children living in households with plenty to eat are
still under-weight or stunted because of misguided infant feeding and
care practices, poor access to health services, or poor sanitation.

The report noted that malnutrition rates are falling in Asia while it is
on the rise in Sub-Saharan Africa.

However, this is not the case in the heavily populated South Asian
countries--India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan where the
under-nutrition rates of 38 to 51 percent are much higher than those of
26 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"We certainly knew that large numbers of malnourished children lived in
South Asia, but what this report now shows us is the shocking fact that
the rates of under-nutrition in South Asia are nearly double those in
Sub-Saharan Africa," says Praful Patel, World Bank Vice President for
the South Asia Region.

Improving nutrition requires focused action by parents and communities,
backed by local and national action in health and public services,
especially water and sanitation, the statement said.

The challenge facing the world, the report noted, is to let malnutrition
continue to perpetuate poverty "as the global community did with
HIV/AIDS for more than a decade, or to finally put nutrition at the
center of development so that a wide range of economic and social
improvements that depend on nutrition can be realized."

"We see growing evidence that in both middle-income and poorer
countries, that there are innovative ways to improve nutrition out
there," says Paul Gertler, Chief Economist of the World Bank's Human
Development Network, and Professor of Health Economics and Finance at
the University of California, Berkeley.