How we tackle hunger
Our advocacy and research helps us understand the causes and promote the solutions to malnutrition.
Jihad from Bangladesh is only ten weeks old, but he has already had surgery to stop him vomiting because he was so malnourished. Now he is slowly improving. Nearly half of all children under five in Bangladesh are under-weight or small for the age as a result of malnutrition.
Our tools for measuring hunger
The most effective strategies to prevent child malnutrition are those that are based on a good understanding of the causes of the problem. Our Cost of the Diet method is a unique approach that helps calculate the minimum amount of money a family will have to spend to meet their energy, protein, fat and micronutrient requirements using locally available foods. Our Cost of the Diet work has been important in raising awareness internationally on the extent to which poverty limits progress in reducing malnutrition among children.
Our Household Economic Approach was also developed to help predict food shortages through the collection and analysis of information on how rural households live and make ends meet.
Our solution: eight-step plan for tackling hunger
Our recent report, Hungry for Change, shows that eight interventions are essential for improving the diets of pregnant women and young children. The interventions are:
- Promoting and supporting breastfeeding
- Supplementing micronutrients and carrying out deworming
- Increasing the availability and reducing the cost of nutritious food
- Cash transfers. Providing cash payments, like pensions or benefits, allow poor families to buy nutritious foods and build up their assets, such as livestock.
- Investmentings in nutrition- friendly agriculture and livestock policies
- Providing fortified foods required for children to grow up strong and healthy
- Educational work on nutrition, hygiene and food preparation practices
- Creating information systems that provide the basis for long-term planning and for rapid response during an emergency
- Managing the treatment of severe acute malnutrition better.
Our eight-step plan reflects the need for a comprehensive and integrated response to under-nutrition combining immediate and long-term interventions. It also presents the cost of ensuring that these interventions reach children at the critical period of their lives, and highlights the key role of donors, the UN, developing country governments and civil society need to play in order to ensure that Millennium Development Goal 1 is achieved.
Our advocacy work
We also carry out advocacy work with relevant developing countries, donor governments and other key international players, such as the UN. We have been calling for:
- nutrition to be included in responses to global food insecurity
- strong and high-level political leadership on nutrition
- greater co-ordination across UN agencies and the World Bank to tackle hunger.
We’re working with Oxfam on a new initiative on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition by 2025.
And, as a direct result of our advocacy work, the Department for International Development (DFID) has just launched its first nutrition strategy - The neglected crisis of undernutrition: DFID's Strategy.
The new strategy will address the devastating impact that malnutrition has on life-expectancy, health and long-term productivity, and will have a direct impact on the life chances of 12 million children by 2015.
Watch DFID's video about undernutrition and where to go from here:
