New agricultural technologies producing up to two to three times more milk and safer milk can prevent 109 children from dying in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
This came up in the eighth annual Goalkeepers report released Tuesday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Goalkeepers report, “A Race to Nourish a Warming World,” also projected that without immediate global action, climate change will cause 40 million children to stunt and 28 million more to waste between 2024 and 2050.
“Modeling shows that in India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania, these technologies can prevent 109 million cases of child stunting by 2050,” the report said, adding that efforts to scale up new ways of fortifying pantry staples, such as salt and bouillon cubes, can reduce millions of cases of anaemia and prevent deaths due to neural tube defects.
“In Ethiopia, a new process to fortify salt with iodine and folic acid could lead to a 4% reduction in anaemia and could eliminate up to 75% of all deaths and stillbirths due to neural tube defects. In Nigeria, fortifying bouillon cubes with iron, folic acid, zinc, and vitamin B12 could avert up to 16.6 million cases of anaemia and up to 11,000 deaths from neural tube defects.
“Efforts to provide a high-quality prenatal vitamin for pregnant women could save almost half a million lives and improve birth outcomes for 25 million babies by 2040.
Adopting multiple micronutrient supplements (MMS) costs as little as $2.60 for an entire pregnancy in all low- and middle-income countries,” the report added.
“Today, the world is contending with more challenges than ever in my adult life: inflation, debt, new wars. Unfortunately, aid isn’t keeping pace with these needs, particularly in the places that need it the most,” writes report author Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “I think we can give global health a second act—even in a world where competing challenges require governments to stretch their budgets.”
According to Gates, malnutrition is “the world’s worst child health crisis,” and climate change is only making it worse.
Amidst this crisis, Gates calls for maintaining global health funding, immediately addressing the growing threat of child malnutrition by supporting the Child Nutrition Fund, a new platform that coordinates donor financing for nutrition, and governments fully funding the established institutions that have proven effective at protecting millions of lives each year. These institutions include Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which is due to hold its next funding replenishment in 2025, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is expected to have its replenishment next year.
The report also illuminates the catastrophic economic costs of malnutrition and highlights solutions that can help mitigate them. According to the World Bank, the cost of undernutrition is US$3 trillion in productivity loss yearly because malnutrition stunts people’s physical and cognitive abilities. In low-income countries, that loss ranges from 3% to 16% (or more) of GDP, which amounts to a permanent 2008-level global recession yearly.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP in Abuja, the Interim Director of Nigeria Country Office at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Uche Amaonwu, called on countries to implement the recommendations of the Goalkeepers report and save children and the future.
Specifically, Amaonwu urged African country leaders to contribute to the global fund and save the future generation from unproductivity, adding that without proper nutrients for the children, the future of Africa is bleak.