Nutrition Security and the Importance of Diet Quality.Buddhima Lokuge, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières
Dr. Unni Karunakara, the deputy director of health for the Millennium Villages project, is introducing Buddhima Lokuge, who is giving a summary of the Starved for Attention Meeting, held the week before by Doctors Without Borders/MSF.
Malnutrition is an issue of poor diet quality. To address malnutrition, we need to look at effective nutrition interventions to promote healthy development.
Malnutrition hotspots:
The “Window of Opportunity” for improving nutrition is very small… pre-pregnancy until 18-24 months of age.
Nutrient-rich foods are more expensive, so as prices rise, poorer populations tend to purchase less nutritious food. He also provided some graphs demonstrating the importance of having meat in a child's diet.
He gave an example of some solutions being used in Sri Lanka:
- Comprehensive antenatal care
- Promotion of exclusive breast feeding
- Complementary feeding
- Mega doses of Vitamin A
- Growth monitoring & promotion
- Health Promotion - child, adolescent and maternal
- Supplementary feeding programme
- A Nutrition Component included
- Fortified foods for children and women
- Nutrition education
Outcomes and recommendations:
- Diet quality: Ensuring children 6-24 months have a varied diet with nutrient dense foods, especially animal source foods, is essential to prevent malnutrition.
- Nutrition safetynets: Many families in high burden areas do not have the resources to buy a nutritious diet for their children.
- Nutrition programming: in high burden areas, the distribution of nutrient rich supplements to all children 6-24 months has a significant impact on malnutrition.
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