Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Take?
The Window of Development Opportunity
November 12, 2009, The World Bank

Click here to access part one and part two of the video broadcast.

Event Background: The battle against malnutrition is urgent and winnable. In the developing world, millions of children are undernourished with profound effects on the prosperity of nations. Yet, effective and low-cost solutions exist that offer the highest possible returns to development. Progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals requires urgent global coordinated action on nutrition. Renewed action on nutrition is also essential to enhance the impact of new investments in food security and agricultural development; health systems strengthening; strengthening the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria; and stimulating increased productivity at the base of the economic pyramid.

The international nutrition community is in the process of developing a Global Action Plan (GAP) on Nutrition, focused on scaling up three strategic areas of intervention, with a special emphasis on the nutritional window of opportunity from pre-pregnancy until two years of age. The three strategic approaches include:

• Programs that empower mothers to breastfeed their babies and support caregivers to introduce adequate and timely complementary foods, practice good hygiene, and access adequate health services 
• Enhanced access to the right foods at the right time to prevent and treat malnutrition in early childhood 
• Enhanced access to essential vitamins and minerals not easily available or found in inadequate amounts in food that are critical to brain and body development in early childhood

These approaches include interventions that are evidence-based, cost effective, and when integrated within ongoing efforts to strengthen food security, health systems and social safety nets, they can save the lives of more than 3.5 million children per year, protect millions more from permanent cognitive and physical damage, and spur economic growth as country capacities are built, and as these interventions are scaled up.

The Global Action Plan represents a renewed call for action from the global nutrition community for better coordination, shared responsibilities, and shared accountabilities to support large-scale action in high malnutrition burden countries, in line with the Paris-Accra declarations for aid effectiveness. The primary objective of the GAP is to create a global movement and a coordinated and compelling call for action to convince country leaders to scale-up nutrition investments. The GAP calls on world leaders to ensure adequate funding for nutrition. This includes the need to secure an additional $10.3 billion annually. Financing is needed from donors, developing country governments, and the private sector to scale up efforts to address malnutrition, especially among the youngest children and their mothers in the 36 countries that carry the heaviest burden of malnutrition.

Event Objectives: As the World Bank and other global partners scale-up their investments in nutrition, this event aims to share some of the early achievements from these efforts at country level, and to build the growing momentum for future action at global and country levels. The country examples and discussions will inform and enhance the scale-up of the Bank’s investments in nutrition. They will also inform further development of the Global Action Plan, and offer lessons learned to-date, including important lessons from ongoing efforts to link nutrition interventions with food security, health systems strengthening and social safety nets.

For additional information, please contact Meera Shekar (mshekar@worldbank.org or 202-473-6029

Complete Meeting Report (PDF 841kb)

Agenda