Direct policies for ‘hidden hunger’

In the West, scant attention has been paid to news that as many as 23 million people are on the brink of starvation across East Africa. Some media briefly focused on this tragedy, before moving back to the finance crisis and this December’s global warming negotiations in Copenhagen.

We are a long way from meeting the UN millennium development goal of halving the number of hungry people by 2015. Hunger in developing countries remains a serious challenge.

Many campaigners across Europe and the US argue that western governments should commit to bigger, more drastic carbon cuts because global warming worsens the problem of starvation.

But all of the evidence shows that direct hunger and malnutrition policies are much more effective than carbon cuts at solving these problems. One effective approach — but one that receives shamefully little attention — is the provision of micro-nutrients to those that lack them.

Micro-nutrient deficiency caused by poor diets is often called “hidden hunger”. Solving this problem was rated the highest priority by a group of Nobel laureate economists gathered by Denmark-based think-tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Centre in 2008 to examine solutions to global challenges. They based their finding in large part on the effectiveness of cheap micro-nutrient initiatives.

Yesterday, the Copenhagen Consensus Centre held a conference in Nairobi to be followed by another in New York. The aim is to attract more attention to these initiatives, and to promote the most innovative approaches in combating micro-nutrient challenges.

The reality is that untold heartache could be avoided with a relatively tiny investment. One in six people in the world do not have access to iodinised salt and is vulnerable to iodine deficiency. This can cause goitre (swelling of the thyroid) or, in pregnancy, can lead to babies with irreversible losses in IQ, deafness, speech defects, and cretinism. Putting iodine in salt costs just US$0.05 a year per person.

ONE IN THREE PEOPLE IN THE world are iron-deficient. This causes anaemia, which makes people weaker and less productive. On average, it means a loss of 17 per cent physical strength and eight IQ points for two billion people. The Flour Fortification Initiative aims to fortify 70 per cent of roller mill wheat flour with iron and folic acid. The annual cost? As little as $0.10 per person.

Worldwide, 140 million children don’t get enough Vitamin A, causing infants and small children to die from diseases such as measles and diarrhoea. Danish company Gumlink is developing a technology that enriches chewing gum with Vitamin A.

The company has built a factory in Zimbabwe, and believes the product shows promise. And this innovative solution is just one of many. Vitamin A can be delivered through cheap capsules, or can be added to milk or cooking oil during manufacturing.

Intestinal parasites — or worms — strip iron from sufferers’ guts, causing disease and intellectual retardation. De-worming treatments eliminate an impediment to healthy nutrition. Kenyan school treatment programmes have proven successful, but there are proven benefits to treating children before they even reach school. The annual cost can be as little as $0.50 per child.

The amount of money needed to reach a majority of at-risk children in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa is insignificant compared to the budgets spent by the US and Europe on anti-terrorism, or on subsidies for their own farmers.

What’s more, investing in micro-nutrient programmes has a significant return when measured in economic terms.

Dr Lomborg is the director of the Denmark-based think-tank the Copenhagen Consensus Centre