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FROM THE FIELD

Nutrition conference explores interlinked global challenges
09 Oct 2009 17:03:00 GMT
 Source: Church World Service
Website: Website: http://www.churchworldservice.org

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Mike Bloem, a medical student of the VU Unitversity in Amsterdam (right), co-author with CWS staff of a nutrition study, at the 19th International Congress of Nutrition in Bangkok, Thailand.
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Mike Bloem, a medical student of the VU Unitversity in Amsterdam (right), co-author with CWS staff of a nutrition study, at the 19th International Congress of Nutrition in Bangkok, Thailand.
Photo: Julia Suryantan/ CWS

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October 8, 2009

BANGKOK, THAILAND Food insecurity, water scarcity and negative impacts from climate change will make it increasingly difficult to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of eradicating the worst of global poverty by 2015.

That is one of the troubling messages coming out of Bangkok, where some 4,000 persons are gathered for the Oct. 4 -9 International Congress of Nutrition.

Dr. Julia Suryantan of Church World Service, a participant, characterized climate change as "one of the critical challenges" to achieving food and nutritional security. "It is making food and water more scarce throughout the world, and that is making it harder to achieve nutritional security globally," said Suryantan, who is co-author of the May 2008 report "Nutrition and Health Survey of Under-five Children and Women in West Timor."

The study, based on a comprehensive survey led by CWS in districts of West Timor, Indonesia, found acute and chronic levels of malnutrition and health and food crises. The survey and report were conducted in collaboration with CARE, Helen Keller International and UNICEF.

At the current International Congress of Nutrition, Suryantan presented demonstration posters involving CWS work in nutrition. One of the posters shows that community-based nutritional initiatives may benefit from training with visual tools. That is a finding of a 2008 study of mothers' perceptions of the nutritional status of their children, conducted in Nias, Indonesia.

Suryantan co-authored the study with principal investigator Mike Bloem, a medical student of the VU University in Amsterdam, Maurice A. Bloem, CWS deputy director/head of programs, Michael Koeniger, director of the CWS program in Indonesia, and Susan Hartono, also of CWS.

Conference attendees also heard presentations of CWS-related work in Indonesia using home-based fortification of meals with micronutrient powder as an approach to treating and preventing hidden hunger problems, and the use of locally-produced peanut/milk paste and cereal/nut/legume-based ready-to-use foods.

The CWS presentations are an example of conference discussions and presentations that address nutrition as an "integrative science," in an attempt to link the problems of food and nutrition security with disciplines such as biomedical and life sciences, food and agriculture and social and behavioral sciences.

Presenters have spoken on themes central to the work of the global humanitarian agency, whose programs and advocacy increasingly are addressing links between climate change and food and nutrition insecurity.

In an Oct. 5 address, Ala Alwan, assistant director general of the World Health Organization, said the 2008 international food crisis led to increased malnutrition throughout the world, with the number of "extremely poor" estimated to have increased by 130 - 155 million.

Climate change's impact on food and nutrition security is being felt globally because higher temperatures are causing greater variations in rainfall, which leads to reduced water supplies in many areas and flooding in others. Experts believe that the next international food crisis has begun because of problems related to water availability. Already, Alwan said, the world's poorest regions are being affected most by global warming.

In Suryantan's view, that means that the work of humanitarian groups like CWS will be needed more than ever in the coming years.

As another component of its effort to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, CWS is collaborating with Hohenheim University in Germany on the development of locally produced "ready-to-use" food for treating mild to moderately malnourished children.

"There is a lot of work to be done in order to achieve food and nutrition security, and we can't do it all," she said. "But what we can do is to prioritize who we assist, what we do, where we work and how we invest our resources in order to achieve greater, sustainable results.

"One of the things that CWS will continue to do, as a result of our long experience working at the community level, is to try to ensure an increased voice and choice for the people that we work with," said Suryantan.

Church World Service is an international humanitarian agency funded by public donations, grants and 35 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican denominations and communions in the United States. It has a 63-year history of responding to food crises throughout the world, supporting sustainable agriculture and development programs, and advocating for the elimination of world hunger.




[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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Last updated:Fri Oct 9 17:09:27 2009