Goal 1: Nutrition

• Food insecurity threatens 800 million people.
• Some 21 million babies are born every year with low birth weight.
• More than 6 million children under five die each year from malnutrition.
• 161 million preschool children suffer chronic malnutrition.
• One-third of the world’s population is affected by vitamin and mineral deficiencies and subject to infection, birth defects and impaired physical and psycho/intellectual development.
• In countries facing emergencies malnutrition which affects nearly 40 million people is one of the major causes of death and disability.
• 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS are exposed to an increased risk of food insecurity and malnutrition, especially in poor settings.

Hunger and malnutrition are intricately bound up with ill-health, poverty and underdevelopment. The past decade has seen some measurable success in reducing the global burden of malnutrition. Nevertheless, nutritional deficiencies still remain responsible for massive mortality and morbidity, and disability worldwide.

WHO’s work: nutrition

Although poverty, hunger and child undernutrition are linked, their relationship is a loose one. Increased wealth does not automatically lead to reduced hunger and child undernutrition. Increases in Gross Domestic Product produce just 50% of expected improvements in child undernutrition rates. This implies that income growth alone is not likely to halve the prevalence of underweight children by 2015. To achieve the hunger and child underweight targets of the first MDG, direct programme investments are necessary, i.e. successful efforts to reduce most forms of malnutrition will be very pro-poor, with benefits heavily concentrated among the poor.

WHO has a unique strength through its work on setting norms and standards at global level and developing strategies to counter malnutrition. Through its close relations with national health authorities, by means of its regional and country offices, and in close partnership with other UN agencies, WHO collaborates in translating national strategies into prioritized results-oriented operational programmes to (1) reduce the prevalence of underweight children under give years of age and (2) to promote healthy diets and improve the nutritional status of the population through the life course, particularly among the vulnerable.

Future directions

There are critical interactions between undernutrition and most of the MDGs, particularly with MDG 1 - poverty and hunger, MDG 4(child mortality), MDG 5(maternal health), MDG 6 (HIV/AIDS and malaria), MDG 2 (education) and MDG 3 (gender equality). If a special effort is not made to tackle the hunger and child undernutrition targets of MDG1, then achievement of all these other MDGs will be compromised.

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