GHI Target: Nutrition

Global Health Initiative's Nutrition Program aims to reduce child undernutrition by 30 percent across assisted food insecure countries. This goal is in conjunction with the President's Feed the Future (FTF) initiative. Chronic undernutrition leaves 170 million stunted children vulnerable to disease and permanently impaired, with their families impoverished and communities less resilient. Undernutrition robs the developing world of critical human capital and capacity, undermining other development investments in health, education, and economic growth. Undernutrition contributes to 2.6 million child deaths each year, more than any disease. It also leads to lower levels of educational attainment, reduced productivity later in life, lower lifetime earnings, and slowed economic growth of nations. The U.S. Government Nutrition Program is a key component of both Feed the Future (FTF) and the Global Health Initiative (GHI), working toward the goal of reducing child under-nutrition by 30 percent. Within GHI, nutrition activities cut across all health intervention areas, contributing to a range of improved health outcomes. Undernutrition is measured by different indicators in different circumstances, depending on the context, including data availability, the population measured, and the advocacy, policy, or program purpose. The four indicators used are: percent underweight, percent stunted, percent women with anemia, and percent children with any anemia. These indicators are collected through Demographic and Health Surveys, which are conducted every five years in U.S. Government-assisted countries. The U.S. Government-supported countries for the Nutrition Program include Africa: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia; East Asia and Pacific: Cambodia; South Asia and Central Asia: Bangladesh and Nepal; and Western Hemisphere: Guatemala and Haiti. The program aims to reduce undernutrition in these countries, with projected reductions in underweight children, stunted children, women with anemia, and children with any anemia. Recent results from Demographic and Health Surveys have shown an annual rate of reduction in underweight children of 3 percent and child stunting of around 2 percent. This represents a change in national level data across the 17 focus countries for nutrition. GHI and FTF assisted countries reached more than 10 million children with nutrition programs in FY 2011. The projected data points for 2013 show a continued reduction in undernutrition, with a projected prevalence of underweight children under 5 years of age of 23.0%, stunted children under 5 years of age of 38.0%, anemia among women of reproductive age of 34.0%, and anemia among children 6–59 months of 57.0%.