Parliamentarians from different political parties made commitments on Friday to end hunger and malnutrition from the country by ensuring implementation of Sustainable Development Goal-2 during a national dialogue organised here by Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Alliance Pakistan (SUN-CSA, Pak) and Micronutrient Initiative.
Opening the discussion, Dr Tanveer Ahmed, chairman of SUN-CSA Pak, said that this dialogue will provide an opportunity to parliamentarians and policymakers to discuss the role of different stakeholders, challenges, opportunities and way forward to address the issue of malnutrition and food insecurity.
Sharing the role of Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, Chief Nutrition Planning Commission/SUN Focal Person Aslam Shaheen said Pakistan signed the global SUN (Scaling up Nutrition) movement in 2013. Scaling up Nutrition is a unique movement founded on the principle that all people have a right to food and good nutrition. It unites people from governments, civil society, the United Nations, donors, businesses and researchers in a collective effort to improve nutrition. He said, "Unfortunately we missed many MDGs and could not achieve nutrition and health related goals. However, the Sustainable Development Goals provide another opportunity to improve our development indicators."
Secretary SUN-CSA Pak, Dr Naseer Muhammad Nizamani said Pakistan is facing a malnutrition crisis that is amongst the worst in the world and has not improved for decades. This needs to be urgently addressed in order to safeguard the country's future development and prosperity. It's a simple fact that nearly half of all children in Pakistan are malnourished, and this undermines their mental and physical growth as well as the country's prospects.
Discussing the role of parliamentarians in implementation of SDG-2, Head of Nutrition at the World Food Programme (WFP) Pakistan, Cecilia Garzon stated that malnutrition is one of the major issues in the country. "About 67% of the households cannot afford a minimum nutritious diet," she said.
Explaining the human impact of malnutrition, she stated, "By year 2030, out of 34 million children under five years of age, approximately 15 million children will be stunted, 5 million will be wasted and 21 million will be anemic." She further said that role of parliamentarians is of crucial value in addressing the menace of malnutrition through policy and decision-making. Nutrition should be the top priority and actions should be taken and policy implemented which is required in the short, medium and long term.
"We should work together to address issue of malnutrition keeping away political differences," said MNA Dr Ramesh Kumar. Saira Iftikhar, Member Provincial Assembly Punjab, said that she is working with different MPAs to form a parliamentarians group that will specifically work on issue of malnutrition. She said the government of Punjab has adopted a multi-sectoral nutrition strategy and now developing a stunting reduction programme for 11 affected districts of Punjab.
Dr Meher Taj Roghani, Deputy Speaker of Provincial Assembly Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said that SDG-2 aims to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030. It also commits to universal access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food at all time of the year. "This will require sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices, equal access to land, technology and markets and International cooperation on investment in infrastructure and technology to boost agricultural productivity," she said.
Dr Abdul Baseer Achakzai, Director Nutrition at Ministry of National Health Services Regulations and Co-ordination, said the economic consequences emerging from current prevalence, as documented in NNS (2011) and PDHS (2013) are $7.6 billion annually which is nearly 3% of the GDP. "We have to invest in nutrition if we want to avoid demographic nightmare," he said, adding that Pakistan's leaders must urgently recognise and respond to this challenge of malnutrition and hidden hunger, and must prioritise the evidence based policies and programmes which can address these crisis.