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Best
Investment for the Future - Nutrition
 Malnutrition
is both one of the consequences of social injustice and one of the
factors contributing to its maintenance. It bears hardest on small
children. Contributing to the massive deaths toll among the young
ones, and together with other adverse environmental factors, it
interferes with growth and development of the survivors. It reduces
their capacity to learn during childhood and earn during adult-hood.
The inevitable result is a downward spiral in which poor malnourished
parents produce malnourished children who in line with become poor
and malnourished parents.
In
Pakistan under-nutrition in pre-schoolers is of varying degree and
there are regional differences as well. The latest figures available
from the National Nutrition Survey indicates that about 10-15 percent
of the pre-schoolers suffers from moderate to severe malnutrition
while 40% are under weight. 25 percent of the newborn is small for
dates. Breastfeeding is quite common but supplemental foods are
started at a rather late stage and usually enough is not given.
Incidence of Goiter in the hilly area i.e. northern part of the
country is as high as 60 percent and cretinism and deaf mutism among
them may be around 5-8 percent. About 65% pregnant and lactating
women and 42% school going children are anaemic due to iron deficiency.
Nutrition intervention and timely measures to prevent malnutrition can reduce
the incidence significantly. Therefore future investment in nutrition
targeted at vulnerable groups should ameliorate or eliminate, especially
micro-nutrient malnutrition or / and even protect the young child
especially from the debilitating effects of malnutrition. This would
help in lowering mortality and morbidity of mothers, foetus and
infants and the cost of hospitalisation. This investment should
also show its effects on reducing poverty due to underlying causes
of malnutrition by allowing impoverished and malnourished children
to be more productive and perform well in education.
It
is now well known that the brain reaches 90 per cent of its final
weight at about the age of six, while body weight has yet to triple
or quadruple before adulthood. However, this rapid cerebral development,
of the greatest importance for the future of the human individual,
cannot be fully attained without appropriate nourishment and adequate
environmental stimulation. Certain educators state that with reference
to the general level of intelligence reached at seventeen years
old, approximately half has already been acquired by the age of
four years; the next 30 percent are added between five and eight
years and the remaining 20 percent between nine and seventeen years.
Measures
that will improve the nutrition of mothers before and during pregnancy
and of infants and young children, will reduce morbidity, will improve
the effectiveness of expenditures on education, will reduce the
cost of health care, and will increase the work productivity of
adults. The prevention, at all ages, of protein and energy deficiencies,
of iron deficiency anaemia of iodine deficiency in pregnancy and
of sub clinical deficiency on Vitamin-A are all important to Pakistan.
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