Address challenges of malnutrition: WFP official

James Harvey

Bangladesh is graduating to a middle-income country and developing fast, but it needs to address the remaining challenges of undernutrition.

In an interview with The Daily Star, UN World Food Programme's (WFP) Chief of Staff James Harvey appreciated the Bangladesh government's renewed vigour in replicating and scaling up sustainable development activities and attaining good economic growth.

He was in Dhaka to attend the launch of a WFP commissioned report -- Strategic Review of Food Security and Nutrition in Bangladesh -- in the city on Tuesday. 

The report said an alarmingly large number of people still remain food insecure and hungry – a quarter of the population or 40 million people – and most people do not have a sufficiently nutritious and diverse diet.

More than 1 in 3 children are still afflicted by stunted growth, and acute malnutrition has not decreased significantly over many years.

Harvey, who was also president of the WFP executive board in 2011, said this report, along with the WFP's next country strategy plan for 2017-21, is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and would help Bangladesh advance towards the target of achieving zero hunger by 2030.

Referring to the debate on whether the incidents of hunger and malnutrition subside only with growth in the economy or not, the British citizen who has a degree in agriculture said nutrition is a country-specific problem.

For example, he said, "In Egypt, anaemia is an acute problem and that's why Egyptians are now fortifying flour with iron."

Bangladesh should address the challenges of nutrition, as the country progresses towards further curbing the menace of food insecurity, he added.

Harvey particularly recommended giving more attention to young mothers, and address the challenges of too many early marriages and the resultant birth of underweight babies.

Harvey, also a former deputy director at UK's Department for International Development (DFID), said 80 percent of WFP's activities are limited to some 10 conflict-zone countries. "Bangladesh doesn't fit into that. It's a country of peace."

Harvey said, in the future, the WFP would be ready to support Bangladesh more in the area of disaster preparedness.

WFP Bangladesh is developing the new Country Strategic Plan 2017-2020, to be approved by WFP's executive board in February 2017. WFP assisted 56,000 people in Southern Bangladesh with emergency food assistance following the effects of Cyclone Roanu.

WFP Bangladesh, with assistance from a consultant deployed by the WFP Washington DC Office, has started preparing a proposal to support the government in scaling up the national school feeding programme.

The current phase of McGovern Dole funding for school feeding will end in August 2017.