Three million undernourished people in Asia and the Pacific must receive sufficient, healthy food each month from now on, if the region is to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger by end-2030, four UN agencies warned on Wednesday.
The Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Children's , World Food Programme and the World Health Organization launched the appeal for urgent action to address hunger and malnutrition in all its forms in a new report, the agencies said in a joint statement.
The report urges decisive, informed and coordinated action to place nutrition at the heart of social protection programmes for the first time in the region, where nearly half-a-billion of the world's undernourished people live.
The report's latest figures relating to hunger, including micronutrient deficiencies also known as hidden hunger, child stunting and wasting make for grim reading as do the nutritional complications brought forward by a crisis of overweight and obesity also sweeping the region, the statement said.
"The prevalence of stunting and wasting in the region remains high, with stunting rates exceeding 20 percent in a majority of the region's countries. An estimated 77.2 million children under five years of age were stunted in 2018, and 32.5 million suffered from wasting," said the report.
Meanwhile, overweight and obesity are also rising among both children and adults in Asia-Pacific, negatively affecting health and well-being. And the resulting burden of diet-related non-communicable diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and respiratory problems, is placing great strain on national healthcare budgets and causing productivity losses, the report warns.
"In many countries in the region, child undernutrition, overweight, obesity and micronutrient deficiencies are converging at the national level, in individual households, and even, in some cases, in the same person," the report said.
"A multi-stakeholder approach is needed to address the multiple burdens of malnutrition," the report added.
Social protection is an important way to help reduce inequality and mitigate the impacts of disasters, the report notes, and a special section on social protection explains that making programmes nutrition-sensitive can accelerate progress in eradicating hunger and malnutrition.
Specific nutrition principles should be applied to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of social protection programmes, both in normal times and in the face of shocks, the report underlines.
Some progress has been made in the region to improve food security and nutrition, the report acknowledges.
"Some of these developments - such as national legislation on food fortification and the implementation of fiscal policies to promote healthy diets - could prove beneficial. Continued economic growth also has the potential to improve food security and nutrition," the regional heads of the four UN agencies jointly state.
"Nevertheless, growing inequality undermines such positive developments, as do climate and conflict-related shocks and disasters."
There is also a need for more research into the impacts of social protection programmes on the health and nutrition of the poor, especially women and children, people with disabilities, and indigenous people, according to the report.
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