UN Food Crisis Summit Must Move Beyond Old Ineffective Recipes - MSF Calls For Reforms To Food Aid And Nutrition Programmes To Save Young Lives

As heads-of-state and nearly 20 key UN officials
meet in Rome this week to design a plan to tackle the current global food
crisis, M?©decins Sans Fronti??res (MSF) is urging the adoption and rapid
scale-up of specific nutritional strategies that target children under two.



Simply expanding existing interventions, which were already not able to
address the ongoing malnutrition crisis, will certainly not protect the
young children who are most vulnerable to rising food prices.



"There is a dangerous double standard in which current food aid and
nutrition programmes are driven more by cost considerations than by the
specific nutritional needs of young children," said Daniel Berman, deputy
director of MSF's Access Campaign. "The nutrient-rich food that growing
children need will only reach them if new approaches backed by increased
resources are adopted."



Rapidly growing children have specific nutritional needs and small
stomachs. They require food dense in energy and diverse in nutrients, which
is best achieved by providing them animal-source foods such as dairy, eggs,
meat or fish. Quality of food is as important as quantity and therefore
policy makers must ensure nutrition security and not only food security.
Soaring food prices will exacerbate malnutrition, with families not able to
afford food nutritious enough for young children to grow, and to both avoid
and overcome disease.



For regions with long-standing malnutrition problems, conventional food aid
does not include specific foods for young children. Milk powder was removed
from relief food targeted at children in the late 1980s when milk surpluses
subsided. Since then, children have been receiving fortified blended
flours that contain no animal-source food - a diet which paediatricians do
not recommend for children under two. Economic considerations have led to
product, which is sub-optimal.



"We need leaders to open their eyes to the needs of young children who are
most vulnerable right now, and for whom more of the same could put them at
risk," said Dr. Susan Shepherd, nutrition advisor at MSF. "One critical
question this week is: will donors change the rules so that appropriate
food for young children is added to food aid and nutrition programmes?"



MSF is calling for food aid to change and for an energy-dense and
nutrient-rich diet to be made available to at-risk children. There are new
and innovative ways of delivering all the nutrients children need to
recover from or prevent malnutrition, and MSF has been able to reach far
greater numbers of children in its field projects with new strategies.



The World Health Organization estimates there are 178 million children that
are malnourished across the globe, and at any given moment, 20 million
suffering from the most severe form of malnutrition. Malnutrition
contributes to between 3.5 and 5 million deaths in children under five
annually.



According to MSF estimates only 3% of the 20 million children suffering
from severe acute malnutrition receive the UN-recommended treatment they
need. MSF has treated over 150,000 children in 2006 and 2007 in 22
countries with therapeutic and supplemental food.



Medecins Sans Frontieres - Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines