By Charles Kazooba
Hunger costs Uganda $899
million a year, equivalent to 5 percent of its gross domestic product, due to
ill health and productivity losses, a government study released on June 17 said.
The study is part of an international push to raise the profile
of malnutrition, which affects one in three children in developing countries.
While many people are aware of extreme hunger crises - when
people starve because they do not get enough food - there has been less focus
on the bigger crisis of malnutrition, when children do not get enough of the
right sort of food.
An extreme form of malnourishment, stunting, affects 165 million
children worldwide. Stunting means they are short for their age and face a
future of ill health, poor performance in school, low earnings and early death.
It occurs because children miss out on critical nutrients, such as proteins,
vitamins and minerals, while in the womb or during the first five years of
life.
The Uganda study, called "The Cost of Hunger in
Africa", is the first of 12 being carried out across the continent to show
the economic, as well as health, impacts of malnutrition.
The Uganda study found that treatment for medical conditions
associated with malnutrition, such as diarrhoea, anaemia and respiratory
infections cost the country $254 million.
Losses in productivity among workers due to lower educational
levels cost $317 million. Childhood mortality linked to malnutrition cost an
additional $317 million because these deaths reduced the country's labour force
by 3.8 percent.
"These are extremely worrying findings," Ugandan Prime
Minister Amama Mbabazi said in a statement, adding that the government needed
to invest in nutrition policies to improve children's diets.
Later this month, Egypt and Ethiopia will release their studies,
which are being supported by the World Food Programme, the African Union and
the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa. Findings from Swaziland, Kenya,
Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Malawi, Botswana, Ghana and Mauritania will
follow.
The Lancet medical journal found that nearly half of all deaths
among under fives - 3.1 million deaths a year - are caused by malnutrition.
A coalition of British non-governmental organisations, under the
banner Enough Food for Everyone IF, is campaigning for donors to give $1
billion a year to tackle malnutrition. Governments, businesses and civil
society committed more than $4 billion at Nutrition for Growth summit in London
in June.
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