Islamabad
The Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Alliance Pakistan (SUN CSA, Pak), a coalition of over 100 NGOs, Friday pleaded for effective measures to address malnutrition and ensure food security in Pakistan.
The call came on the occasion of World Food Day, which is celebrated every year on October 16 on the anniversary of FAO’s founding in 1945. This year the theme of World Food Day 2015 is ‘Social protection and Agriculture,’ and its aim is to underline the role social protection plays in reducing chronic food insecurity and poverty by ensuring direct access to food or the means to buy food. Social protection is a viable alternative for stimulating agricultural production and local economic activity.
Pakistan is facing a silent crisis of malnutrition that is amongst the worst in the world, and has not improved for decades. Results from the 2011 National Nutrition Survey (NNS) indicated diminutive change over the last decade in terms of core maternal and childhood nutrition indicators in Pakistan.
Malnutrition alone is responsible for 35% of under-five deaths in Pakistan and is one of the major reasons of Pakistan’s slow progress towards achieving reducing child mortality. Nationally, in children under 5, 43.7% were stunted as compared to 41.6% in the 2001, 15.1% were wasted compared to 14.3% in 2001 and 31.5% were underweight (no change since 2001).
Vitamin A status had deteriorated and there had been little or no improvement in other micronutrients (Anemia - 61.9%, vitamin A deficiency - 54%, zinc deficiency 39.2% and vitamin D deficiency - 40.0%). Pakistan has the lowest exclusive breastfeeding rate of 37.7 per cent and the highest bottle feeding rate of 41 per cent. The only success story is iodine status which has improved nationally according to the survey, with 69.1% of the households using iodised salt (kit testing results) as compared to 17% in 2001.
SUN CSA, Pak has requested the government to take
necessary steps towards improving the situation of nutrition in the country, particularly by implementing the Protection of Breastfeeding and Child Nutrition Ordinance and its Rules by holding regular meetings of the federal Infant Feeding Board; developing the PC-1 and successfully implementing the National Initiative for SDGs/Nutrition project of Rs100 million; and enactment of Universal Salt Iodisation law. The civil society also demands formulation and adoption of comprehensive agriculture and food security strategies to ensure food secure Pakistan.