Tanzania: State of nutrition

18 March 2010, The Citizen
URL: http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/component/content/article/37-tanzania-top-news-story/740-state-of-nutrition.html

Dar es Salaam:  About 120 Tanzanian children below the age of five die every day due to malnutrition, a problem whose solution is however, at an arm’s length reach. 

A new report says the country is facing a severe vitamin and mineral deficiency that besides the loss of life, also costs the nation a whooping Sh700 billion in loss of income annually.

“High levels of malnutrition cause death, but rarely because children starve. Children are dying needlessly because their diets lack basic nutrients to build strong immune systems and stay healthy,” says Irenei Kiria, Executive Director of Sikika. She said the consequences are that such children are most likely to die when they fell sick with diarrhea, malaria or pneumonia.

Ms Kiria said 600,000 children have died this way over the last 10 years while the current annual count stands at 43,000 deaths throughout the country. That averages to one child dying every 12 minutes.

These grim statistics are contained in a paper released yesterday in Dar es Salaam by several advocacy organisations. The report was compiled using different studies by Uwazi-Twaweza in association with Policy Forum and Sikika. The organisations use information dissemination to generate public knowledge and discussions on important governance and development issues. They also aim at raising the public’s participation in policy debate and discourse.

The paper was released a head of a World Bank roundtable discussion, tomorrow, by stakeholder on the state of malnutrition in Tanzania.

The country, according to the report, has 2.4 million malnourished children, making it the third worst affected country in Africa. Only Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of Congo are worse.  The malnutrition burden is said to hurt the economy because ill-fed farmers and labourers are unable to produce to their full potential, resulting in a loss estimated at 2.6 percent of the country’s combined richness (GDP).

The Policy Forum’s Coordinator Semkae Kilonzo warns that continued inaction would undermine the nation’s efforts to attain its poverty alleviation objectives under Mkukuta and meeting some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

According to the paper, this sorry situation and the high number of children dying early before they even celebrate their first birthday could be reversed significantly, but only if authorities acted swiftly to adopt tested means to ascertain that a majority of poor families enjoyed appropriate nutrition.  Some of the obvious ways of attaining this is through exclusive breastfeeding and introduction of foods enriched with vitamins and iron minerals (Fortification).

On both counts, Tanzania is doing poorly. Only 13.5 per cent of infants are exclusively breastfed at 4-5 months of age, whereas the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that mother suckle all their babies exclusively for 6 months.

The report says that unlike in neighboring countries, only salt is iodized in Tanzania while there has been no major initiative in the last decade to tackle malnutrition. Kenya and Uganda have already fortified cooking oil and flour.  In Tanzania, millers are reportedly not allowed to fortify because standards have not been set for such an activity to commence.

“By setting and enforcing food fortification standards and promoting exclusive breastfeeding, the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre and the Tanzania Bureau of Standards can make a real difference. It’s time for them to exercise leadership,” says Kilonzo.

It is estimated that if authorities would introduce fortified flour and cooking oil alone, it would be enough to save 6,700 children from an early grave every year and add an additional Sh153 billion in economic value.
 
It has also been noted that if all the deaths due to malnutrition are stopped, the country’s infant mortality rate could be reduced to 41.5 per 1,000 population, to virtually ensure achievement of the infant mortality rate (MDG) goal of 40 per 1,000.

Top world economists have also ranked tackling malnutrition as the best interventions for economic costs and benefits. It ranked highest and occupied five of the top ten recommendations for advancing global welfare, particularly in developing countries.