Invest in it

It took me three days to walk to a remote village in the Far West. On the school playground, I saw chubby children, their hair a brownish color. I was told that children in this area had health problems. A health specialist quickly explained to me that the cause for faded hair and extended bellies of these children was severe malnutrition.

This was my first direct encounter with children suffering from malnutrition. Since then, I've met countless other malnourished children across Asia Pacific region. They've all left a deep impact on me. It's critical we explore ways to address this situation that has devastating consequences on these children's lives.

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In my recent trip to Indonesia, I visited an urban settlement in Jakarta. There, I met Rukmiyat Yayat, a grandmother in the neighborhood of Cilincing in north Jakarta, who has monitored children's health for more than 25 years. She said that she had seen the number of malnourished children decline in her neighborhood but confirmed that the problem still haunts many families. Lack of awareness, neglect and a complex web of other issues allow malnutrition to persist. Yayat told me that no single entity can solve this problem despite improved efforts from the government and aid organizations.

Globally, malnourishment has a staggeringly effect on every nation. According to the World Health Organization, some 53 million children under age five are under weight in Asia Pacific alone in 2013. Globally, 3.5 million children under five die every year due to under nutrition.

In financial terms, the damage to a nation's wealth is enormous. According to a 2014 paper by the World Bank, under nourished individuals in their early years lose more than 10 percent of lifetime earnings, and many countries lose at least two to three percent of their gross domestic product to under nutrition. In terms of healthcare cost, under nutrition places a heavy burden on governments.

So, what's being done to tackle it? Over the past decade, malnutrition has become top concern for many governments and UN agencies. Indeed, many nations in Asia Pacific have made progress in reducing the number of children who are underweight or stunted. However, others are still struggling with high numbers of under nourished children.

Worse, UNICEF data highlights how child wasting—a more acute form of under nutrition—has grown in the last 15 years, with higher rates of wasted children detected in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal among others. The increasing rates are deeply disturbing as nearly every nation has experienced growth in GDP in the past 15 years. Simply put, the fast developing world is leaving the most vulnerable children behind.

Can anything be done to stop the trend? Numerous practices have been established and proven, but most need to be expanded. Increased investment and rights-based policies are important. Still, other issues such as education, social norms, and culture that contribute towards this problem need to be addressed.

At World Vision, we believe three key measures can be taken to help nations accelerate their response to under nutrition in children. First, it is vital that governments take action to ensure adequate funding and improved policies are addressing their nation's children and protecting them from malnutrition. Second, multi-sectoral partnerships and people's participation can help effective implementation of government policies and empowering citizens to address issues of malnutrition and its impact on children.

For example, the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement unites people—from governments, civil society, the United Nations, donors, businesses and researchers—to improve nutrition. Within the SUN movement, national leaders prioritize efforts to address malnutrition. Countries are putting the right policies in place, collaborating with partners to implement programs with shared nutrition goals, and mobilizing resources to effectively scale up nutrition, with a core focus on empowering women.

Citizen Voice and Action is another social accountability approach adopted by World Vision and being implemented across Asia Pacific. Citizen Voice and Action aims to improve dialogue between communities and government to improve services, such as health and education that impact daily lives of children and their families. Social accountability refers to civic engagement by communities designed to improve the government performance.

The third way to address malnutrition is to create targeted programming for the most vulnerable communities. Interventions should target behavior change, micronutrient and deworming interventions and complementary and therapeutic feeding programs. The heart of World Vision's global health and nutrition intervention is a package of preventive interventions targeted to mothers and children less than two years.

As the world moves to the end period of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), international development organizations are calling for zero-based goals in the next sustainable development goal agenda, including the elimination of preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths and of hunger. This means that the most vulnerable, especially children, who have been left behind in the MDG era, need to be reached. When countries aspire for growth in development they cannot undermine the well-being of their children.

Innovative solutions exist but they need to be scaled up. The effort needs to be given more attention to battle child malnutrition. Countries in Asia Pacific should invest in ending this horrible condition affecting children. We can end this together.

The author is the regional advocacy lead for World Vision in South Asia and the Pacific