Pakistan loses three percent of its GDP ($ 7.6 billion) every year due to enormous malnutrition of mothers and children, Chairman Planning and Development Board Punjab Muhammad Jehanzeb said while inaugurating seminar titled 'Nutrition National Perspective: Role of Provinces' here on Wednesday. Punjab Government hosted this seminar to reiterate its commitment towards ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition in collaboration with all the provinces and to develop joint activities & linkages for improvement in nutritional status in the country.
He said it was imperative for Pakistan to ensure that there was improvement in mother and child nutrition as its burden on Pakistan's economy was enormous. The responsibility to fight this endemic was even greater for Punjab for it was not only about establishing food security, but about enhancing future economic growth and sustainable development of the country.
He said that Economic Growth was just one benefit of an improved nutritional standing of the province, attendance at schools, increased literacy, increased employment and increased standard of living; were all drivers that should motivate us to work together for Nutrition. Addressing the seminar Punjab Minister Primary & Healthcare Khawaja Imran Nazir said that Government was committed towards drastically lowering the malnutrition indicators in the Province.
Primary & Secondary Healthcare Department has the right strategies and programmes currently underway to approach the problem of malnutrition in all 36 districts of the province with efforts being directed towards service delivery and behavior change communication to ensure that the problem of malnutrition is dealt with a forceful hand. Minister P&SH said that the department has been prioritizing the challenge of malnutrition in southern Punjab that depicted the highest malnutrition rates in the province through the inclusion of a new programme focused on southern Punjab.
According to the HDI report, Pakistan has been ranked as the 147th country to fall in 'Medium Human Development' group; a clear declaration that the country's population was unable to reach its full potential because of deprivation in key dimensions of human development. A major constituent of this Human Development was Nutrition in the country. The conference included participation of all key stakeholders to ensure a comprehensive discussion