World Bank Blogs
Syndicate content

nutrition

Will Little Rahul Be Poor in 2030?

Onno Ruhl's picture

“Bye sir!” Rahul was running ahead into the distance. It was hard for me to imagine how he could be running… The cracked soil was incredibly hot and extended all the way to what looked like a lake in the distance. It was not a lake…it was a mirage.

“He wants to be a doctor,” said his mother, who was walking next to me. “His sister does not know yet. She is only 2...”

When I came home from my visit to Gujarat, where we met Rahul Kalubhai Koli in Dhrangadhra in Surendranagar district, I could not stop thinking about him. He is 4 1/2, and he wants to be a doctor.

Do Hunger and Malnutrition Make You Want to Cry? Time to Get Your HANCI Out

Duncan Green's picture

Yesterday marked the launch of the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI), produced by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) with funding from Irish Aid and DFID. It looks like it could become one of the more useful annual league tables.

It may not be seen as a progressive view in the UK, but I’m a big league table fan, especially when they’re combined with access to new information. They use political rivalry to motivate politicians, the media love them, they allow good guys to be praised, as well as under-performers to be slapped, and they hand civil society some useful ammunition. The post2015 circus might be well advised to spend more time designing an effective league table, rather than adding yet more issues to its Christmas tree.

Salt, health's silent enemy

Sumito Estévez's picture

También disponible en español

Também disponível em português

kitchen

This year, World Health Day focuses on hypertension. Specialists report a clear link between excessive salt consumption and high blood pressure. In this blog, Venezuelan chef Sumito Estévez explains how the use of salt in our cooking has changed. He also shares some ideas for reducing salt consumption and reminds us that governments are also responsible for taking measures to decrease consumption.

Coq Au Vin (Chicken in red wine) is a delicious traditional French dish. Those who have had the privilege of preparing this slow-cooked recipe know that once the sauce has thickened, practically no extra salt is needed.

Researcher Q/A: Can Early Nutrition Boost a Child’s Economic Future?

Aliza Marcus's picture

It is well-documented that prenatal nutritional supplements can give children the right start in life by supporting development in-utero and improving birth-weight, which reduces infant mortality. But can a case be made that good nutrition early on will give children a measureable earnings boost years later?

Nutrition in Latin America: a policy menu to improve emergency responses

Marie Chantal Messier's picture

También disponible en español y portugués

Women and children first! Sound familiar? The gentlemanly rule of Titanic-fame seems to have expanded in our collective minds to all emergency situations.

It seems, though, that in Latin America and the Caribbean this time-honored rule is not written in stone. As it turns out, women and children are generally not at the forefront of public efforts in crises and emergency situations.

Within Reach

Asma Lateef's picture

With 2015 fast approaching, many of us in the development community are paying close attention to how post-MDG plans are unfolding. At Bread for the World Institute, we are using the 2013 edition of our annual Hunger Report to share our thoughts about getting to 2015 and how we’d like to see the post-MDG agenda develop.

The 2013 Hunger Report, Within Reach – Global Development Goals, calls for a strong push, starting right now, to meet the MDG targets by 2015.

SAR DM Grantees speak out about their winning projects on Nutrition

Phoebe Folger's picture

Photo credit: DFID - UK Department for International Development's photostream on FlickrIn light of its increasing mandate to address undernutrition in South Asia, the World Bank, with its partners, held a South Asia Regional Development Marketplace (SAR DM) on Nutrition under the theme: “Family and Community Approaches to Improve Infant and Young Child Nutrition.”

The SAR DM on Nutrition supported the testing of innovative ideas across South Asia to deliver improved nutrition services to pregnant and lactating women and children under two.

World Breastfeeding Week: Healthy growth for the next generation

Julie Ruel-Bergeron's picture

SF-LA005 World Bank

This week (August 1-7) is World Breastfeeding Week, an occasion to remind ourselves of the important role that optimal infant and young child feeding plays in the healthy growth and development of individuals, communities, and nations. For more than 30 years, the World Bank has championed the importance of breastfeeding. This includes investing in advocacy and communications to policymakers, strengthened health systems, and effective community-based outreach to provide the knowledge and support needed by women and their families.

 

To mark World Breastfeeding Week, World Bank nutrition experts have updated this helpful Q/A on the topic:

 

What are the health benefits of breastfeeding?

Breastfeeding is one of the most powerful tools available to a mother to ensure the health and survival of her child from the moment he/she is born. Optimal breastfeeding practices, which include initiating breastfeeding within an hour of birth, feeding only breast milk until 6 months, and continuing to breastfeed up to 24 months, are key elements in the fight against malnutrition. Breast milk provides all the nutrients a child needs for healthy development in the first six months of life. And the antibodies that are transferred from a mother to her child during breastfeeding help protect infants against common childhood illnesses that can lead to death, such as diarrhea and pneumonia.

 

The Lancet’s 2008 series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition has estimated that the relative risk of death (all cause mortality) is 14 times higher for a child who is not breastfed versus one who is exclusively breastfed. When broken down by disease, the relative risk of death from diarrhea and pneumonia is 10.5 and 15 times higher, respectively, for children who are not breastfed versus those that are exclusively breastfed.

 

Maya’s second birthday: Celebrating strong health systems

Cristian Baeza's picture

We’ve got something to smile about this week at the World Bank: Our baby Maya, who has shown us the importance of having a strong health system and access to quality maternal and child health care, has reached her second birthday!

 

To mark this special occasion, we’re launching a new video about the things that helped Maya achieve this milestone, including access to family planning and proper nutrition. These are two key services provided by well-functioning health systems that create healthy futures for mothers and their children—along with other affordable services, trained health workers, clean water, vaccines, well-equipped clinics, and many other moving parts.

 

The video—the second in a series that began with Maya’s birth—comes as the global health community holds a summit on family planning this week in London. I hope Maya’s story underscores what a difference access to effective family planning can make. By giving women the means to space the births of their children by three years, for example, deaths of children under-five would decrease by 35%.

South Asia's nutrition marketplace

Julie McLaughlin's picture

Malnutrition in South Asia is the worst in the world (yes, worse than that of sub-Saharan Africa). It undermines the efforts of countries to reduce poverty, increase educational attainment and productivity, expand innovation and entrepreneurship, and reduce maternal and child mortality. It’s also why, for the past two years, 21 organizations from India, Nepal, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have implemented community-based innovations for improving infant and young child nutrition, financed by a unique World Bank small grants initiative known as the Development Marketplace.

Aid composition and basic nutrition: Putting money where your mouth is?

José Alejandro Quijada's picture

The latest Global Monitoring Report analyzes the impact of recent food price spikes on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), paying particular attention to the negative consequences that temporary food price shocks may have on nutrition.

Nutritional outcomes are directly linked to the MDG on hunger (MDG 1.c) and indirectly to most of the remaining development targets, through its effects on cognitive skills of young children and consequently on human capital accumulation. Unfortunately, progress in fighting undernourishment is considerably lagging across nearly all developing regions (figure 1).

Socio economic consequences of food price spikes

Will Martin's picture

High food prices, especially when they have increased suddenly and unexpectedly, have been found to hurt many poor people around the world. The Global Monitoring Report 2012: Food Prices, Nutrition, and the Millennium Development Goals (GMR) finds that the food price shock that peaked in early 2011 pushed nearly 50 million people into poverty. On one level, this is not surprising—the poorest people, after all, spend nearly all of their income on food. But on further reflection, this result is not so obvious— three quarters of the world’s poor are rural and the majority of them depend on farming for their livelihoods. The problem is that—unlike farmers in rich countries—many poor farmers in developing countries don’t produce enough food to meet their families’ needs. These net buyers of food are hurt by higher food prices even though they are farmers.

Food and nutrition: How do we balance the equation?

Leslie Elder's picture

Although the world produces a surplus of food, we have yet to achieve the right balance between the production of food and achievement of good nutrition. A new World Bank-hosted knowledge platform will generate better understanding of the links between agriculture, food security and nutrition, to help countries reach the Millennium Development Goal on hunger (MDG 1). Read more on the SecureNutrition blog.

Why nutrition matters

Bénédicte de la Brière's picture

Three years from the deadline for reaching the Millennium Development Goals, two-thirds of countries will not reach MDGs 4 and 5 (child and maternal mortality, respectively). And now the second food price rise in three years is a wake-up call for the development community.

In this context, the Global Monitoring Report 2012: Food Prices, Nutrition, and the Millennium Development Goals examines some of the possible consequences of food price increases, such as a rise in poverty and undernourishment1. Households cope through a variety of mechanisms, including: eating less nutritious diets and then less food; making more household members work (women and children); and not seeking health care when ill. The most vulnerable (the poor, children, and pregnant women) bear the brunt of these adverse impacts.   Moreover, as countries seek to maintain food prices, some increase food price subsidies and cut into other services.


Pages