| The merits of eating French cakes |
| Vibha Varshney / New Delhi Dec 04, 2007, 05:42 IST |
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Recently, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international humanitarian organisation, pointed out another dimension to the problem. It said that food, like nutrient-rich flour, is not suitable to meet the nutrition requirements of malnourished children.
Instead, it suggested using ready-to-use, energy-dense food like Plumpy’nut, which is made of peanuts In India, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), under the Department of Women and Child Development, reaches out to undernourished children with staple food.
MSF, which is providing Plumpy’nut to the victims of Naxalite violence in Chhattisgarh and to AIDS-affected children in Manipur, is calling for agencies and donors like the World Bank —which is providing loans to ICDS — to fund ready-to-use food in nutrition programmes.
No problem with that except that Plumpy’nut is a patented product and costs 3 euros (Rs 165) per kg.
Treating a severely malnourished child requires feeding him or her 12.9 kg of the product over 10 weeks. For India, with 2.6 million severely malnourished children under the age of five, this will mean spending over Rs 30 per child per day. Add to that importation costs and the price may double.
Now compare it with Rs 2.70 per day per child ICDS is providing for severely malnourished children in India and you will know we are talking of a quantum jump in expenditure.
Umesh Kapil, professor, Department of Human Nutrition, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, cautions: "There should be sufficient tests to ensure that they are effective in Indian conditions."
If MSF’s recommendations are accepted, the worldwide demand for ready-to-use food will increase sharply. Specifically for Plumpy’nut; about 258 million kg of it, costing Rs 4,125 crore, will be needed to treat the 20 million children who estimates have severe malnutrition in the world. The cost may even be higher given that powdered milk needed to make it is in short supply.
People working with communities in remote parts of the country, however, say providing such therapeutic food is not going to help.
“You cannot call hunger a disease. The approach needs to be de-centralised by roping in NGOs and self-help groups,” says Yogesh Jain, paediatrician with the Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS), a non-profit health organisation in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh.
“Short-term interventions are not the solution. The child is likely to become undernourished again once back home,” adds A V Ramani, also working with JSS.
www.cseindia.org |
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