(Daily News Scan - DNS English) World Nutrition Report 2020
Recently, the Global Nutrition report 2020 was released. According to this report India is among 88 countries that are likely to miss global nutrition targets by 2025. Not only this, this report identified India as a country with the highest rate of domestic inequalities in malnutrition. The pandemic COVID-19 has exposed the weakness of food and health systems. The Report stresses that there is a need to address malnutrition in all its forms an urgent need of the hour. The 2020 Global Nutrition Report looks beyond global and national patterns, revealing significant inequalities in nutrition outcomes within countries and populations. Based on the best-available data, the report identifies critical actions to achieve nutrition equity. Everyone deserves access to healthy, affordable food and quality nutrition care.
In this edition of our DNS we will look into what the report has to say about the global nutrition level.
In the year 2012, 6 nutrition targets were identified for maternal, infant, and young children nutrition to be met by the year 2025.This target was identified by WORLD Health ASSEMBLY. It required the governments to reduce stunting by 40%, in children under 5 and prevalence of anaemia by 50% among women in the age group of 19-49 years, ensure 30% reduction in low-birth weight and no increase in childhood overweight, increase the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months up to at least 50% and reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5%.
The Report 2020 at the global level found that most people across the world cannot access or afford healthy food, due to agricultural systems that favour calories over nutrition and low cost of highly processed foods. Inequalities exist across and within countries as per the report. The report also found that 1 in 9 people is hungry, while one in three is overweight or obese.
In INDIA’S perspective the report mentions that India will miss its target for all four nutritional indicators for which there is data available, i.e. stunting among under-5 children, anaemia among women of reproductive age, childhood overweight and exclusive breastfeeding.
If we talk about stunting, India is identified as among the three worst countries, along with Nigeria and Indonesia. Stunting level in Uttar Pradesh is over 40% and their rate among individuals in the lowest income group is more than double those in the highest income group at 22.0% and 50.7%, respectively. In addition to this, stunting prevalence is 10.1% higher in rural areas compared to urban areas.
In cases of overweight and obesity there are nearly double as many obese adult females as there are males (5.1% compared to 2.7%).
The report calls for a change in food systems. Fresh or perishable foods are less accessible and affordable in many parts of the world compared to staple grains. Whereas, processed foods, especially ultra-processed food, are available, cheap and intensively marketed, with sales high and growing fast in many parts of the world including India. These changes demand policy and planning resources to promote desirable nutrition outcomes.
Solutions have started to emerge across the world. These include: increased public investment for healthier food products, support for shorter supply chains for fresh-food delivery programmes, use of fiscal instruments, limiting advertising of junk food, and food reformulation, or the use of front-of-pack labelling (FOPL) to inform consumers and influence industry behaviour.
The findings of the 2020 Global Nutrition Report make clear that tackling malnutrition should be at the centre of our global health response.
