Workshop to identify key nutrition advocacy issues

Islamabad
A three-day strategy development workshop of SUN (Scaling up Nutrition) Civil Society Alliance (CSA) got underway here on Tuesday, with alliance members working together to identify key nutrition advocacy issues, revisit the alliance objectives, and set out the results which the alliance aims to achieve in the next three years.
The strategy will provide direction to SUN-CSA, Pak members to carry out effective advocacy and communication activities to promote good nutrition for the people of Pakistan, a country which is facing a silent crisis of malnutrition that is amongst the worst in the world and has not improved for decades.
Addressing members on the workshop’s first day, Dr. Baseer Achakzai, director nutrition at the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination, pointed out: “The children of today will take Pakistan forward and if they are stunted, in the next 10 years, how will they gain employment? How will stunted children grow up to be women and then mothers that can nourish healthy babies?”
Representing the national SUN focal person and sharing the role of SUN movement in addressing malnutrition in Pakistan, Dr. Ali Ahmad Khan pointed out that “overcoming the current malnutrition crisis could result in 3-4% GDP increase for Pakistan.”
The 2011 National Nutrition Survey (NNS) indicates that stunting, wasting and micronutrient malnutrition are endemic in Pakistan. Results from the 2011 NNS and 2012-13 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) indicated diminutive change over the last decade in terms of core maternal and childhood nutrition indicators in Pakistan. In children under the age of 5, there’s been little to no improvement in the prevalence of various micronutrient deficiencies: anaemia 61.9%, iron deficiency 43.8%, vitamin A deficiency 54.0%, zinc deficiency 39.2%, and vitamin D deficiency 40.0%.
Children under 5 years of age were 45% stunted in 2013 as compared to 43.7% in 2011 and 41.6% in the 2001, 11% wasted as compared to 15.1% in 2011 and 14.3% in 2001, and 30% underweight as compared to 31.5% in 2011 and 2001. The only success story was iodine status which improved nationally according to the 2011 survey and 69.1% of the households were using iodized salt (kit testing results) as compared to 17% in 2001.
In 2013, Pakistan signed the global SUN Movement, founded on the principle that all people have a right to food and good nutrition. SUN CSA, Pak is a national nutrition civil society network created with the goal to promote sustainable improvement in nutritional status of the people of Pakistan by creating a strong, coordinated and vibrant civil society constituency which will support further development and wider implementation of the nutrition agenda.
SUN CSA, Pak was launch-ed in December 2014 and currently has 110 civil society organisation members from across Pakistan.