Achieving Zero Hunger to Drive Progress on The Global Goals

This Wednesday marked World Food Day – recognised annually on October 16, it is a global call to end hunger and ensure food security for all. Tackling hunger and malnutrition is crucial for creating a more equitable, sustainable world.

Between 2000 and 2020, child mortality rates halved due to factors like increased development aid, strong political leadership, more healthcare workers, vaccines, and new medicines. However, this progress has since stalled. But, addressing malnutrition could halve child deaths again.

Malnutrition affects over 400 million children worldwide, limiting growth and increasing the risk of disease, sometimes reducing the effectiveness of vaccines and treatments. Italso impacts education and poverty, with severely malnourished children completing five fewer years of schooling and earning about 10% less in their lifetime. They’re also 33% less likely to escape poverty.

On top of all of this, climate change worsens malnutrition, hitting the most vulnerable the hardest.

However, the good news is, it is possible to solve malnutrition, save millions of lives, and accelerate progress toward the Global Goals. Healthier children can attend school and receive an education, which in turn means economies can grow and extreme poverty decreases.

The 2024 Goalkeepers Report explores some of the ways that we can address malnutrition and nourish a growing population in a warming world:

Access to Nutritious Food

Everyone needs access to affordable, nutritious food, but in many places, healthy options are too expensive. Food fortification, adding essential vitamins and minerals to staples like rice and cooking oil, is a solution. At the Goalkeepers event which took place during UNGA this year, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, former Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization, and chef Marcus Samuelsson highlighted fortified bouillon cubes. Widely used across Africa to season food, these stock cubes are cheap and, when fortified, deliver essential nutrients. In Nigeria alone, fortified bouillon cubes could prevent over 16 million cases of anemia annually.

Empowering Women Farmers

Efforts to fight malnutrition can have a huge impact on gender equality. Often, smallholder farmers are women. Their income depends on farming and often they aren’t in control of their own money. Around the World, programmes are being implemented to train women in better farming and selling practices, leading to increased income.

For example, in Kenya, MoreMilk teaches dairy farmers to improve hygiene and care for cows, resulting in better milk production and safer products. Women use this increased income to buy fresh fruits and vegetables to provide a nourishing diet for their families. Extra income is also used to pay school fees, giving more children the chance to attend school and even university.

Nourishing Mothers and Babies

Proper nutrition during pregnancy is critical for both mother and child. Nutrient deficiencies, like a lack of iron, can cause adverse birth outcomes. Prenatal vitamins often don’t address a pregnant woman’s nutritional needs, and are not always accessible. Multiple Micronutrient Supplements (MMS) could provide the solution.

MMS are small pills packed with 15 essential vitamins and minerals – and they’re affordable, costing only $2.60 per course.

At Goalkeepers, Rwanda’s Minister of Health Dr Sabin Nsanzimana discussed the huge impact that MMS have had in Rwanda since implementing MMS in the districts most affected by stunting (when your brain and body don’t develop properly due to malnutrition). The program has already provided MMS to over 50,000 pregnant women in Rwanda, improving pregnancy outcomes and the quality of life of mothers and babies.

If MMS programs were implemented globally by 2040, they could save 500,000 women from preventable deaths during pregnancy and childbirth. Dr. Sabin emphasized the need for leaders to act boldly and quickly to implement these programs.

Treating Severe Malnutrition

With rising conflicts, climate disasters, and living costs, more children are at risk of severe malnutrition. Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (RUTF), which provide essential calories and nutrients, are used to treat severe acute malnutrition and prevent wasting (extreme weight loss due to malnutrition).

Goalkeepers Champion Dr. Tahmeed Ahmed is leading an innovative project in Bangladesh testing Microbiome-Directed Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods (MD RUTF). These therapeutic foods use local ingredients, like chickpeas and green bananas local to Bangladesh, to heal the gut and prevent relapse of wasting, creating a sustainable solution for treating malnutrition.

The Future of Food

As Global Goalkeeper Award Winner President Lula of Brazil said at Goalkeepers, “It is unacceptable that in the 21st century – in a world with advanced technology… with man visiting many planets – that we have children that go to bed at night without eating… Hunger is not a natural phenomenon; hunger is a lack of responsibility from world rulers who don’t want to see the poorest people, who don’t care for the necessity of food distribution.”

There’s no one solution to solving malnutrition. Ensuring access to affordable, nutritious diets for all is key. But with emerging research on the gut microbiome, AI to aid agricultural production and courageous leadership to implement public health programmes like MMS, we can ensure no-one goes to bed hungry and drive huge progress on the Goals.

Watch Goalkeepers 2024: A Recipe for Progress here.

Read the Goalkeepers 2024 Report here.

Author: Raabia Ghaznavi, Assistant Producer at Project Everyone