Maternal and Child Nutrition

Between 2005 and 2008, global food prices increased by 83 percent and more than 100 million additional people were pushed across the threshold into hunger. There were food riots in 37 countries, all of them nations whose hunger rates were high even before the price hikes. The riots were predominantly an urban phenomenon. Most of the world’s poor and hungry people live in rural areas, but in the face of steep price increases, poor families in urban areas are no better off than those in rural areas.

Developing countries struggle because of weak health systems and poor infrastructure, and it’s extremely difficult to reach the most vulnerable segments of their population—women and children. Most global health funding in recent years has been disease-focused, with the bulk of the resources going to fight HIV/AIDS. These have helped prevent and treat diseases but have not addressed some of the cross cutting issues that result in poor health and nutrition outcomes, or worse, insufficient progress in reducing maternal and child mortality.

The foods consumed by poor people are predominantly staple grains like rice, sorghum, and maize. These are cheap and can fill the stomach to quell hunger pains. But people, especially children, need more than cereals to live a healthy life. Good health depends on dietary diversity—adding protein from animal products, groundnuts, and legumes as well as the vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables.

Entering a therapeutic feeding center for the first time is unsettling. Therapeutic feeding centers are for young children suffering from severe malnutrition. Three staff from Bread for the World Institute visited such a center in rural Ethiopia at the height of the “hungry season,” the period before the next harvest when food is most scarce. The center was a few hundred kilometers from Ethiopia’s capital city of Addis Ababa, and it was a Spartan environment. The room where the children were treated was bare except for blankets spread across the concrete floor. There were a dozen children there that day, their mothers sitting beside them. They had carried their children here on foot, some walking from more than 10 miles away.

In some countries, women lack the right to own land, are regarded legally as minors, and cannot get a bank loan without the approval of a male relative. If a woman’s husband dies, she could lose all the assets she’s accumulated during the marriage. To continue farming the land she and her husband held, and to feed her children, she may have to marry one of her husband’s male relatives.