By CHRISTINE MWAABA –
ZAMBIA continues to be ranked among countries in Africa with the highest levels of undernourished children at 48 per cent, a figure projected between 2014 to 2016.
This is according to the current statistics on countries with undernourished children compiled by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and World Food Programme (WFP).
The rates of undernourishment are similar with those generated from Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI), Central Statistical Office (CSO) survey, IFPRI Hunger Index and Zambia Demographic Health Survey (ZDHS).
In terms of malnutrition, the most recent ZDHS carried out in 2013-2014, has also revealed that 40 per cent of children under the age of five were stunted, five per cent wasted, 15 per cent underweight, and nine per cent of children were estimated to be overweight.
At 40 per cent stunting rates, Zambia’s malnutrition levels are among the highest in the world.
What’s more distressing from the statistics is that regardless of the agricultural growth that the country has experienced during in the last decade, levels of under nutrition have barely changed.
But according to experts, proper nutrition is a basic requirement for any life and plays an important role in promoting health as well as preventing undernutrition and malnutrition in a human being.
Although this requirement is vital Zambia, continues to be one of 22 African countries with the highest burden of under nutrition in children under the age of five.
According to Zambia Civil Society for Poverty Reduction, the current situation requires urgent thought.
Zambia Civil Society for Poverty Reduction Programs Coordinator Edward Musosa said the present under nutrition statistics can be attributed to poor nutritional food intake.
Mr Musosa said the current agricultural production is focused on one staple cereal, maize, and not other crops that have right nutritional value.
Maize contributes the major part of the food energy supply in Zambia, while nutrient-rich foods such as legumes, animal-source foods, fruits and vegetables are only minor contributors.
Thus, the diets of most Zambians are poor.
That is now causing serious health implications.
For instance, a significant proportion of children still suffer from stunted growth; and overweight.
“Despite Government policy aimed at improving food and nutrition security, Zambia’s food and agriculture system is not providing adequate nutritional foods for all,” he said.
A person who eats healthy foods will resist most illness that will try to attack him or her because nutritious foods will help straighten the immune system making that person resistible.
The poor nutritional situation reinforces the urgent need of appropriate and efficient interventions to mitigate the problem in the country.
In 2012, the Zambian Government committed to achieve the World Health Assembly’s (WHA) six international targets to tackle malnutrition by 2025, using a 2012 baseline which includes reducing stunting by 40 per cent, maintain or reduce levels of childhood obesity, reduce and maintain wasting to less than five per cent, among others.
In 2015, the Zambian Government signed up to a new universal sustainable development agenda, adopted by member states at the UN General Assembly in New York contained within the new Agenda 2030 committing the world to end malnutrition and under nutrition in all its forms by 2030.
The country’s Seven National Development Plans (7NDP) has also acknowledged nutrition as an important factor that underpins progress towards achieving the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and improving productivity and national development.
It notes several key areas of focus as important entry points for improving nutritional status, agriculture, livestock and fisheries, health, education and skills and commerce, trade and industry.
Even with all these measures have been put in place.
Up till now, under nutrition remains a serious public health concern with children being denied a healthy life which would enable them reach their full potential.
The urgent need to reduce rates of under nutrition in Zambia becomes even more pressing seeing that under nutrition is a condition that is easily preventable and treatable yet has seen largely unchanged rates in Zambia since the early nineties.
Under nutrition is an insufficient provision of energy and nutrients, such as good quality protein with an adequate balance of essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals, and an inability to meet the requirements of the body to ensure growth, maintenance, and specific functions.
Under nutrition includes being underweight for one’s age, being too short for one’s age, stunted, dangerously thin, wasted, and deficient in vitamins and minerals, micronutrient malnutrition.
Hivos Southern Africa Hub Project Manager Wesley Wakun’uma said statistics of undernourished children in the country are alarming.
He said it is a sad to note that though the country boasts of recording bumper harvests annually, over dependence on maize explains why Zambia is ranked among countries with the highest number of undernourished children.
He said the maize crop widely grown in the country has low nutrition value.
“People should reach a point where they question what they are eating, where it is coming from and its benefit or negative elements to personal health,” he said.
Not too long ago, Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya urged Members of Parliament (MPs) to advocate for nutrition and ensure that it is high on the national agenda.
Speaking during the recent orientation of MPs on the First 1000 Most Critical Days initiative, Dr Chilufya said addressing nutrition will address more than half the challenges the health sector is facing.
Nutrition being a key determinant of health, the minister urged MPs to develop a thorough understanding of the key determinants of health.
“We depend on MPs to advocate that our constituents have access to water and sanitation, nutrition, education, especially for girls, as a key determinant of health,” he saod.
He said the focus on nutrition is to make sure that Zambians are sensitised so that if nutrition is addressed nutrition, 70 percent of the country’s health problems would vanish,” he said.
Dr Chilufya said there was need to make sure that nutrition literacy is enhanced so that people cannot become vulnerable to the nutrition-related conditions.
Meanwhile, the 2015 Global Nutrition Report has established that every $1 that is invested in scaling up proven nutrition interventions generates about $18 in economic returns.
At the national level, by the time today’s children reach adulthood, investing in malnutrition could increase Zambia’s GDP by $123 million annually.
UNICEF’s Country Programme 2011-15 has also suggested that strengthening institutional capacities in the nutrition sector by improving implementation and coordination of strategic interventions can reduce the overall undernutrition in the country.
Available evidence demonstrates that malnutrition impacts negatively on health, economic productivity and development.
However, limited attention has been paid to translating policy into actions or integrating nutrition concerns into activities that have tangible impacts on overall nutritional outcomes in the country.
Given the evidence, addressing under nutrition requires an urgent mix of direct and nutrition sensitive interventions that promote good nutrition to curtail the public health concern that has a negative impact on Zambia’s economic development.