Rolf Carriere
08/02/2004
What do successful corporate outsourcing, a child’s report card, lower health care costs and one of the oldest industries in China have in common? Something minuscule affects them all—and no, I am not referring to the beating of a butterfly’s wings in Katmandu. In fact, the answer is vitamins (like A, B, C and folic acid) and minerals (like iron and zinc). In an effort to enhance worker productivity around the world, improve children’s learning capacity, increase resistance to infectious diseases and cut birth defects in half, major food industries—including soy sauce producers in China—fortify their products with vitamins and minerals.
In high-income countries, we take it for granted, if we think of it at all, that iodized salt is widely available to protect us from thyroid malfunction and mental retardation, and that the flour in our bread is enriched with iron and vitamins. But this kind of nutritional safety net does not yet exist in most developing countries.
While in high-income countries we can compensate for nutritional shortfalls with pills, in developing countries, where vegetable or animal food sources are often scarce, neither the market economy nor the health delivery system has found an effective way to deliver supplements to those most in need.
Lack of vitamins and minerals can be devastating. In the next 12 months, economic development specialists estimate:
• 1 million children below the age of 5 will die in large part due to a lack of vitamin A;
• 50,000 women will die during or soon after childbirth from iron deficiency anemia;
• 19 million infants will be born with impaired mental capacity due to a lack of iodine in salt;
• as many as 100,000 children will be born with preventable physical defects such as spina bifida because their mothers had too little folic acid in their diets before conception.
Meanwhile, malnourished adults will cost the global
economy approximately $6 billion in poor work performance. In developing
economies, vitamin and mineral deficiencies are not just symptoms of poverty:
they are a direct cause of it.
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition
(GAIN), a Swiss foundation launched in 2003, fosters public-private-civil
society partnerships to help bring micronutrient-fortified foods to developing
countries. Our goal is to contribute to the improved nutritional status of at
least 600 million people in up to 40 developing countries by 2007. Business
leaders and philanthropists are in an excellent position to contribute to the
effort, by donating, engaging government authorities in dialogue and
participating in industry councils.
Diets and Development
GAIN’s major donor is the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. The United States Agency for International Development, the Canadian
International Development Agency and the Micronutrient Initiative provide
complementary resources. The governments of Germany, the Netherlands and Japan
have also pledged funds. The World Bank serves as GAIN’s financial
trustee.
To date, we have approved grants totaling $30 million to Bolivia,
China, Dominican Republic, Ivory Coast, Mali, Morocco, Pakistan, South Africa,
Uzbekistan and Vietnam. All of these countries have identified the foods that
even the poorest households consume regularly, and have forged alliances with
their leading local or multinational food industry companies to add specific
vitamins and minerals. They have also set up national alliances among such
partners as consumer organizations, the government and leading universities to
provide consumer education, product promotion, food quality control and program
evaluation.
We anticipate that our small investments will have a large
impact. In Vietnam, the Asian Development Bank estimates that $2 million a year
spent on better nutrition will lead to an annual increase of $74 million in
blue-collar productivity and of $177 million in heavy-labor productivity.
Enhanced school performance and learning should help increase the future
earnings and productivity of children by about $103 million.
In the
Middle East, where bread is an important staple, fortified bread can provide up
to 94 percent of a person’s daily iron requirement. We estimate that this could
increase current and future productivity by $200 million a year.
Malnutrition
is a complex problem that requires input from all stakeholders for its
resolution. Private donors and foundations can sustain GAIN’s efforts and
increase the likelihood of eliminating malnutrition in a single
generation.
Rolf Carriere is the executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition in Geneva (www.gainhealth.org).