Zambia has made great progress in promoting exclusive breast feeding, becoming the sixth highest in the world at over 72 percent, according to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report.
The 2016 Global Nutrition Report, however, says 40 percent of children under the age of five are stunted, a situation which often results in permanent damage to children’s cognitive development.
The report further states that only an estimated 0.14 percent of government spending in Zambia is allocated to nutrition despite 40 percent of children under the age of five being stunted.
And according to the 2016 Global Nutrition Report, Malnutrition is on the rise in every country in the world and is a leading global driver of disease.
The Report also says 44 percent of countries are now experiencing very serious levels of both under nutrition and obesity and that, despite good progress in some countries, the world is off track to reduce and reverse this trend.
“One in three people suffer from some form of malnutrition,” said Lawrence Haddad, Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report’s Independent Expert Group and Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. “We now live in a world where being malnourished is the new normal. It is a world that we must all claim as totally unacceptable.”
The Report highlights the staggering economic costs of malnutrition, as well as the critical gaps in investments and commitments.
“We’re far from done addressing under nutrition,” said Prof. Corinna Hawkes, Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report’s Independent Expert Group and Director of the Centre for Food Policy, City University London. “But governments and donors now also have to cope with the threat that nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases and obesity pose to improving global health and development. One in 12 people globally have diabetes now, and nearly 2 billion people are obese or overweight. We must stem the tide.”
Despite these challenges, the Report shows that progress has been made, and is possible. The number of stunted children under 5 is declining in every region except Africa and Oceania. Individually, many countries have shown remarkable progress: in Ghana for example, stunting rates have almost halved – from 36 to 19 percent– in just 11 years. Many countries are also close to being on track to meet global targets; Peru and Malawi, for example, are close to being on track to meeting global targets on breastfeeding and anemia reduction.
The Global Nutrition Report is an annual assessment of countries’ progress in meeting global nutrition targets established by the World Health Assembly and commitments made at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in 2013.
