Every year, 3.5 million mothers and children below the age of five die in poor countries because they do not have the nutrition they need to fight common diseases. Three-quarters of them could have survived diarrhea or malaria if they had been properly nourished.
For those who do survive, the future looks grim: All studies show that children who are undernourished in the first two years of life suffer health problems and lag in development for the rest of their lives. Insufficient nourishment impedes their capacity to learn, fitness to work and ability to develop their talents.
Besides the human suffering, the economic costs of malnutrition are huge: World Bank data shows that countries where malnutrition is most prevalent lose, on average, between 2 percent and 3 percent of their GDP.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
The issue is not severe and acute malnutrition, which hits populations suddenly, usually as a result of conflict. The question is how we attract the attention of the EU and the G8 countries to the malnutrition that experts call “hidden hunger,” which affects one in every three people worldwide. It is caused by imbalanced nutrition or a lack of vitamins and essential minerals that enable the human body to grow and that maintain its vital functions.
For example, recent data show that even a moderate deficiency of vitamin A results in higher mortality. In fact, we could avoid the death of at least 1 million children every year by improving their intake of it.
Doing so would not be difficult. Humans have added essential vitamins or minerals to their foods since time immemorial; indeed, since the beginning of the 20th century, food fortification has been a major government policy in developed countries to reduce nutritional deficiencies and improve public health. All scientific studies of such interventions prove that fortification of basic foodstuffs works.
Chile promoted the addition of iron to milk, resulting in a 66 percent reduction of anemia among babies.
The fortification of maize meal with folic acid in South Africa — one of the projects supported by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) — was followed by a 40 percent reduction in spina bifida, a serious deformation of the neural tube in newborn babies.
Moreover, these essential interventions cost little and deliver a lot: To enrich cooking oil with vitamin A costs less than US$0.10 per liter, and fortification in general has a benefit-to-cost ratio of at least eight to one.
What is missing is the willingness to act. At GAIN, we are convinced that there is an urgent need to fight malnutrition if the world wants to achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which commit the world to halving global poverty and hunger by 2015.
Fighting malnutrition is the first step toward reaching this objective. Science has demonstrated the cost-effectiveness of food fortification, and the technologies and know-how are available in the private sector, which has the capacity to innovate and deliver products to the poorest.
Europe and the G8 must act. Not only do they need to make the fight against malnutrition a policy priority; they also must invest. The equation is straightforward: 160 million euros (US$250 million) for fortification programs could improve the health of 1 billion people.
To put that amount into perspective, the regular move of EU institutions between Brussels and Strasbourg costs 200 million euros per year.
While the latter is an understandable expense historically, the time has come for the EU and the G8 to make different political choices that help keep 3.5 million mothers and children alive and well.
Marc van Ameringen is executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
The return of US president-elect Donald Trump to the White House has injected a new wave of anxiety across the Taiwan Strait. For Taiwan, an island whose very survival depends on the delicate and strategic support from the US, Trump’s election victory raises a cascade of questions and fears about what lies ahead. His approach to international relations — grounded in transactional and unpredictable policies — poses unique risks to Taiwan’s stability, economic prosperity and geopolitical standing. Trump’s first term left a complicated legacy in the region. On the one hand, his administration ramped up arms sales to Taiwan and sanctioned
The Taiwanese have proven to be resilient in the face of disasters and they have resisted continuing attempts to subordinate Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nonetheless, the Taiwanese can and should do more to become even more resilient and to be better prepared for resistance should the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) try to annex Taiwan. President William Lai (賴清德) argues that the Taiwanese should determine their own fate. This position continues the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) tradition of opposing the CCP’s annexation of Taiwan. Lai challenges the CCP’s narrative by stating that Taiwan is not subordinate to the
US president-elect Donald Trump is to return to the White House in January, but his second term would surely be different from the first. His Cabinet would not include former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former US national security adviser John Bolton, both outspoken supporters of Taiwan. Trump is expected to implement a transactionalist approach to Taiwan, including measures such as demanding that Taiwan pay a high “protection fee” or requiring that Taiwan’s military spending amount to at least 10 percent of its GDP. However, if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invades Taiwan, it is doubtful that Trump would dispatch
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has been dubbed Taiwan’s “sacred mountain.” In the past few years, it has invested in the construction of fabs in the US, Japan and Europe, and has long been a world-leading super enterprise — a source of pride for Taiwanese. However, many erroneous news reports, some part of cognitive warfare campaigns, have appeared online, intentionally spreading the false idea that TSMC is not really a Taiwanese company. It is true that TSMC depositary receipts can be purchased on the US securities market, and the proportion of foreign investment in the company is high. However, this reflects the