Nutrition

Description

Nutrition programs focus on evidence-based interventions that are foundational to a child’s life. They prevent stunting, wasting, and anemia and promote breastfeeding during the first 1,000 days – from the start of a woman’s pregnancy to a child’s second birthday. The programs support long-term health, cognitive development, and physical growth.

What Does This Buy?

Funding provides biofortification, micronutrients, programs that address nutritional deficiencies, including vitamin nA and iodine, and nutrition supplements for pregnant women. Funds also provide technical assistance to introduce and increase nutrition activities in priority countries, including education and delivery of services such as micronutrient supplementation and community management of acute malnutrition.

Justification for the Request

• With the help of U.S. funding, nutrition interventions reached more than 27 million children under 5 years of age in 2016.
• Between 2000 and 2017, the number of stunted children under 5 years declined from 198 million to 151 million.
• Children who get the right nutrition in their first 1,000 days are 10 times more likely to overcome life-threatening childhood diseases such as malaria.
• For less than $5 per newborn, breastfeeding interventions have the largest impact on improving a child’s health. Breastfeeding serves as a child’s first immunization to disease.
• For every dollar spent on nutrition programs the return on investment is $35 through decreased health care costs and improved economic productivity.
• Twenty-five percent of children under 5 years of age suffer from undernutrition, and each year nearly 3 million children die from hunger.

U.S. Interest

• Undernutrition in children slows economic growth and perpetuates a cycle of poverty through loss of productivity with poor physical status, loss of cognitive function, decreased schooling, and increased health care costs over time. Economists estimate that stunting alone can decrease a country’s GDP by as much as 12%.
• Investments in nutrition during the first 1,000 days pave the way for today’s children to drive tomorrow’s growing economies and markets.
• Children suffer life-long consequences from undernutrition, often affecting national productivity as well as compromising their ability to fight illnesses and learn, diminishing their economic potential, and increasing their risk of adult-onset chronic illnesses.

Bold Vision

• Significant progress has been made toward ending malnutrition, but we are off track. To realize the United States’ vision of an end to the need for foreign assistance, we need to accelerate progress on maternal and child nutrition.
• While 90% of children treated for malnutrition are cured, current funding levels can only reach 33%.
• For every additional $4.70 a child can benefit from breastfeeding. With scaled-up breastfeeding, more children can survive and thrive, more breast cancer deaths could be prevented, and billions in potential economic losses could be salvaged each year.
• For every additional $9 invested a case of anemia can be addressed.