Preventing undernutrition and overweight
Star Health Desk
Although many low- and middle-income countries have policies in place to tackle undernutrition, often the major health threats of overweight and obesity are neglected. Many do not consider overweight as a major threat and it is not properly priorioritised in health policy.
To help countries close these policy gaps, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued a consolidated package of 24 Essential Nutrition Actions, which outline the most effective ways countries can improve their peoples' nutritional status by preventing both undernutrition and overweight.
The core interventions recommended by WHO include:
• Improve nutrition of pregnant and breastfeeding women.
• Encourage early initiation of breastfeeding, exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months, then continued breastfeeding up to 2 years.
• Promote appropriate solid foods for young children.
• Provide micronutrient supplements and fortified foods, when needed.
In order to avoid a massive explosion of nutrition problems in the next generation, experts from WHO urged policymakers to give urgent and immediate attention to improving the nutritional status of pregnant women and adolescent girls who will become mothers of the next generation.
These conditions — under-nutrition, obesity and overweight — are forms of malnutrition with their causes and consequences closely linked to inadequacies in the food system. A food system that does not deliver a sufficient amount of quality food can lead both to poor growth and to excess weight gain.
A child who has grown poorly in his first years of life may turn into a short but overweight adolescent and then later in life, develop chronic disease as an adult.
Many policies to address the other half of the "double burden" of malnutrition — obesity and diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke — are much further behind, especially in Africa and South-East Asia that includes Bangladesh. And even when policies to address obesity exist at a national level, they are often not implemented at provincial or district level. Only one third of surveyed countries regulate the marketing of foods to children, and only a few have taken measures to reduce salt or trans fats in foods.
Plugging the gap is policy is crucial to fight malnutrition. This is additionally beneficial to reduce infant and child mortality, improve growth and development and improve productivity of our next generation.
Source: World Health Organisation
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