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Sustainable Nutritional Solution To The World Hidden Hunger By Segun Imohiosen
It is very interesting to realise that in spite of the large number of civil liberty and the non governmental organisations being paraded in recent times that none seem to have shown any particularly appreciable interest in nutrition. A high percentage of the people in the world, in fact one third of the people world over don’t get enough iodine from food and water. Unfortunately, one of the commonest phenomenons identifiable with the lack of this nutrition is the swollen around the neck which is more noticeable in women, called goiter: an enlargement of the thyroid gland appearing as a swelling of the front of the neck - iodine deficiency is one of several causes.
Although I have heard in recent advertisement with NAFDAC’s recommendations that people should only patronise iodised salt. This is totally a new development which is a far cry from what has used to being the norm. This is no other reason than the side effect that is present in the lack of iodisation. And it goes to show that the awareness is becoming keen by the day – may be due to research or some other chance experience so to say. Disappointedly though, the issue about nutrition particularly with iodine is that it is very unnoticeable, in fact totally insignificant as it appears but the damage is enormous due to the lack of it.
Particularly in Black Africa, there are too many cases of associated nutritional problems that have been said to be witch craft attacks. But the trouble here is that ignorance is the witch craft attack that seems to be killing a lot of people particularly the rural dwellers and in some extreme cases the urbanites. In a material ‘Vitamin & Mineral Deficiency A Challenge To Media Professionals’, reflects the impairment of hundreds of millions of growing minds and the lowering of national IQs, damage to immune systems and deaths of a million children in a year, the death of approximately 60, 000 women a year and childbirth, the birth of 250,000 babies a year with serious birth defects, the large-scale loss of national energies, intellects, productivity and growth. In a nutshell, iodine deficiency is a major cause of intellectual deficiency on the planet, vitamin A deficiency is responsible for a million death of children a year, even in recent times, it has been discovered that the lack of this vitamin was seen as a nutritional problem causing blindness in severe cases while iron deficiency is the most wide spread health problem in the modern world. This is known to impair the normal mental development of 40%-60% of the developing world infants.
Nicholas D. Kristof reported in the New York Times of December 4, 2008 that the result of the lack of this nutrition in extreme cases is large goiters and other obvious impairments such as dwarfism and cretinism. But it was observed that far more common is mental slowness which could result in different experiences for different set of people.
It is so alarming that for the commonest salt which ordinarily is ubiquitous in every home could create this much of damage and the world seem to be asleep without looking for ways to tackling the problems the lack of iodized salt is causing. I got to understand that it was not enough for you to have the salt but it has to be iodised. Congruously, I read that iodizing all edible salt has the potential to eliminate iodine deficiency disorders across the globe. Research revealed that “in the early 1990s only one-fifth of the house holds in the world used iodized salt. Today more than two-thirds of households consume iodized salt”. I think the producers of domestic salt automatically must have something very important to wake up to in order to help mankind realise their God given potential through their compliance to iodizing the domestic salt produced. My quest for information as usual brought me to the door step of a group where I picked and read a material to discover that every “year; 38 million newborns are at the risk to falling victim to iodine deficiency disorders that silently steal their mental potential. This is compounded by iron deficiency anemia, which severely limits a child‘s capacity to thrive”. Unfortunately, quite a number of pregnant women in the underdeveloped and developing countries are victims of iodine deficiency with the resultant effects being the children born are prone to irreversible brain damage and have an I.Q that would be ten to fifteen points lower than what it would otherwise be. This put together world over will reflect a result of a large number of men, women, young and old people being somewhat mentally deficient.
The world donors in specific groups find it a lot easier to pump huge sum of money into different ventures without looking at the issues of nutrition except very few. UNICEF has been in the fore front of nutritional educational awareness, enlightenment and support, the fact being that its mandate cut across children matters with regards to education. But you would be astounded that MI ranks number two after UNICEF in nutritional matters all over the world but is rarely ever heard of. Sometimes names no doubt play a very dominant role in the life of anyone. This is one group that its function has come to take a dominant paradox upon its nomenclature. Micronutrient initiatives but with a macro movement all around the world, envisioning a world free of hidden hunger and with the purpose to ensure that the world’s most vulnerable – especially women and children – in developing countries get the vitamin and minerals they need to survive and thrive. In the past year, MI reached more than 500 million people in over seventy countries. The reason may be traceable to the unpopularity of this aspect of health matters in terms of discovery, whereas it ought to receive more than necessary attention because it is gradually and slowly retarding and claiming lives very unsuspectingly.
Having seen the significance of vitamin and mineral and the negative consequences of this in man, the World Bank has this to say that “The control of vitamin and mineral deficiencies is one of the most extra ordinary development-related scientific advances of recent years. Probably no other technology available today offers as large an opportunity to improve lives and accelerate development at such low cost and in such a short time”. When you take a considerable interest in all of this you will discover hat just very little effort is needed to rid your environment of this subtle but debilitating and killing Vitamin Mineral deficiency which thrives on ignorance and indifference.
The Copenhagen Consensus 2008 was one forum of certification that laid credence to the significance of the issue of nutrition in the world by virtue of the authorities who made invaluable contributions at the forum. The essence of this is most probably to wake the governments up all over the world in order to make a paradigm shift from the ‘business as usual’ norm on issues of concern in life. And to give concern to other areas of health that appear very insignificant but have a stronger hold on life than you can cursorily imagine. The panel at the forum has as its goal to set priorities among a series of proposals for confronting ten great global challenges such as air pollution, conflicts, diseases, global warming, education, malnutrition and hunger, sanitation and water, subsidies and trade barriers, terrorism, women and development. The authorities present were drawn from different fields but in particular renowned economists of world class repute commissioned from acknowledged authorities- the Western Universities and Institutions in each area of policy, set out 30 proposals for the panel’s consideration to chart the way forward. Each of this paper was examined and critically appraised. Surprisingly in the ranking of the proposals in a descending order of desirability gave the issue of malnutrition priority place in 1,3,5,6 and 9 in the entire thirty proposals. This is most revealing to show that what the world has thought to always have the first place is no longer so; there is a shift that is calling for a greater attention globally.
In the quest for solution to hidden hunger and to invest a helping hand to expand the reach to those who are most vulnerable, Micronutrient Initiative in collaborations with UNICEF and other partners have successfully reached out to more than half a billion people in the world. The reach is not enough until the entire world is touched and saved from this evil. This is a clarion call for the rest of the world to take advantage of this new area and marshal their strength to fostering effort into nutritional concern that will help rid the world of hidden poverty. This I believe is achievable if other organisations like the health related NGOs, FBOs and other bodies and donor agencies come out to give their support in delivering the world of this hidden hunger that is gradually killing the world ignoramuses and indifferentists at different levels. At what may appear as an extraneous call though, I will advise that we borrow a wandering leaf from the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet (the world humblest billionaire), Ophrah Winfrey and a host of others who have added value to mankind by lending helping hands, that those endowed billionaires emulate them and not use their wealth for frivolities but plough it towards putting a smile on the faces of the children of the world through iodization and vitamin minerals to raise national IQs and save lives. CIDA, UNICEF, The Izumi Foundation, Helen Keller International, World Bank, World Food Programme and others have been supportive to this cause, many more groups and individuals should be involved.
Segun Imohiosen writes from Abuja National Press Centre, Abuja.
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