Launch of IDS collection of papers on under nutrition in Zambia Welcome, morning structure and overview of the publication Insert protocols Good morning everybody – it is a pleasure to welcome you today to the launch of the first IDS special collection of papers on undernutrition in Zambia. And it is a great honour to have his Excellency the Vice President, Guy Scott with us to do the opening speech. His presence reaffirms the commitment from the Zambian government to decisively address undernutrition. This commitment was made clear when Zambia joined the Scaling Up Nutrition movement in 2011, and by the Vice President himself, when he attended the high level Nutrition for Growth event held in the UK in June 2013. This morning we will hear short presentations from the authors of selected papers, followed by a presentation from the National Food and Nutrition Commission on costing the scale up of nutrition interventions in Zambia. After a short tea break we will hear a response to the papers from five distinguished panellists. The panel discussion will be moderated by Professor Lawrence Haddad, former director of IDS and currently Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI. We will then have an open and I am sure, stimulating discussion. Let me start by setting the context of undernutrition in Zambia and giving you a brief overview of the publication. Key statistics • The level of undernutrition in Zambia is high and persistent – almost 1 in 2 children under five are stunted or chronically malnourished. In addition more than 30% suffer from Vitamin A and iron deficiencies and at least 10% of babies are born underweight because their mothers are undernourished. • But around 20% of women are also overweight, reflecting the emergence burden of obesity due to changes in lifestyle and dietary habits particularly in urban areas. • We know that undernutrition causes almost 50% of child deaths. Undernourished children face a cycle of recurring illness and growth faltering which damages their physical and cognitive development. • And undernutrition reduces a nation’s economic growth by at least 8% because of direct productivity losses, losses due to poorer cognition, and reduced schooling. We cannot afford for nothing to change. • Investing in nutrition will benefit child growth and everybody’s nutrition status and also help sustain economic growth. Promising developments, global evidence and the Zambian context. • With increasing commitment of Zambia and international partners, we are seeing promising developments and this offers an unprecedented opportunity to improve nutrition indicators. Zambia’s economy is strong and growing, with real prospects for a 2030 vision where no children are malnourished. • It is against this renewed focus on the importance of addressing undernutrition that the UK commissioned the collection of papers. • The global evidence on what works is strong – • We know that addressing undernutrition will require scaling up both direct nutrition interventions (e.g. breastfeeding, appropriate complementary feeding from 6 months, micronutrient supplementation), and indirect or nutrition sensitive interventions such as supporting vulnerable families to have a more diverse and nutritious diet and improved access to clean water and sanitation. • Responding to this evidence, Zambia has launched the first multi-sectoral national strategy and the 1000 Most Critical Days Programme – focused on the period between conception and the first two years of life, when we can maximise the impact of nutrition interventions. • The programme focuses on scaling up a package of interventions for mothers and children and calls for a concerted effort across health, social protection, agriculture, education, water and sanitation. • Zambia has also embarked on an ambitious scale of the social cash transfer programme, which we know is helping many vulnerable families to increase their number of meals and fulfil basic needs • But we face many challenges in scaling up the package of interventions to sufficient coverage and quality. In Zambia there are critical gaps in the provision of services to address every one of the underlying determinants of undernutrition. We need to understand these constraints, address key financial and human resource gaps and look at successful models to see how best to scale up these interventions in the Zambian context • This is precisely what these papers attempt to do – written by Zambians and others working on nutrition problems on the ground, they put national voices at the forefront of the collection. Overview of the publication, three major themes, key messages • The papers have been divided into three themes: 1) Key issues affecting undernutrition in Zambia; 2) Responses and programme experiences to address undernutrition; and 3) Role of government, civil society and donors in scaling up undernutrition. During the course of the morning we will hear what the different sectors and stakeholders can do, but let me highlight a few key overarching messages arising from the collection: 1. Despite strong economic growth, efforts to reduce undernutrition are not getting as much help from general economic growth as they would in many other contexts. Zambia needs to invest more on nutrition and to address high levels of inequality by targeting those most nutritionally and economically vulnerable. 2. There are significant human resource gaps in nutrition, both at national and community level. Increasing the numbers of qualified nutritionists and strengthening capacity to provide quality health and nutrition services on the ground is critical. 3. Although the global evidence on how to reduce undernutrition is strong, there are still evidence gaps about how best to do this at scale in Zambia to achieve the impact needed. Thus, rigorous monitoring and evaluation are key to strengthen the evidence base. [This collection of papers is a contribution to this]. 4. Zambia has a number of sound nutrition policies and programmes in place. However, the governance of the nutrition sector need to be strengthened. This includes ensuring high level oversight of progress against key indicators, and strong coordination across key sectors responsible for delivering nutrition interventions. We know that from the time the papers were commissioned in mid- 2013 progress against all these fronts is being made. As I said, the opportunity to act and to change the past nutrition trajectory in Zambia is incredible. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the nutrition cooperating partners, I would like to commend the Government for its increasing attention to undernutrition and to encourage sustained political leadership and systemic attention. We know there is no magic bullet but as cooperating partners, we are ready to support national efforts, and we know that investing in nutrition today will yield huge economic and developmental benefits in the medium to short term. Thanks Lawrence Haddad ([email protected]); Vivienne Benson ([email protected]); William Chilufya ([email protected]) Subject: RE: Press Release for Launch of Zambia Collection
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 18:17:08 +0000
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