ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani government has allocated eight billion rupees ($50 million) to provide a cash stipend and nutritious food to mothers across the country to help fight malnutrition and stunted growth in children.
The health and nutrition cash transfer program, launched as a pilot project in nine districts, aims to address stunting in children less than two years of age and reverse what the government has called an “ongoing crisis” by strengthening children’s nutritional needs.
Malnutrition in Pakistan is the highest in the region with 30 percent children underweight and 44 percent stunted. Around 49 percent Pakistani women are moderately anaemic, more than half of Pakistani children under the age of five are anemic, and 39 percent children in the country are zinc deficient, according to the latest National Nutrition Survey.
“We have started this program [in districts] where the prevalence of stunting is the highest,” Dr Sania Nishtar, special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection, told Arab News through email this week.
“This is one of the priorities for the prime minister which is why we have a special program called Ehsaas Nashonuma, a conditional cash transfer program with free distribution of specialized nutrition food,” Nishtar added.
Poverty and a diet of mostly boiled rice or mashed potato are partly to blame for his stunting, which is caused by a lack of nutrients, protein, vitamins and minerals found in meat, fruit and vegetables.
Research shows that insufficient nutrition in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life can lead to irreversible damage to health, growth and development.
Stunted children learn less in school and are more likely themselves to live in poverty and go on to have children also stunted by poor nutrition. These in turn increase poverty in affected countries and regions, and drive greater gaps between the rich and the poor.
Under the Pakistani government's new program, 33 centers have been set up in nine districts including Upper Dir, Bagh, Ghizer, Hunza, Kharmang, Kharan, Badin and Rajanpur, where families will be provided a quarterly stipend of 2,000 rupees for girls and 1,500 rupees for boys along with packets of food.
Nishtar said the government would soon be launching a program dashboard so that people could track the utilization of the funds and the impact of the program.
“We will be expanding this program based on results of the evaluation [in nine districts],” she said.
Diet and nutrition experts say malnutrition and stunted growth is a complex and multi-sectoral problem that exists in children from both poor and rich families.
“Children require intake of nutritious food which include milk, egg and meat because these things give the required iron and protein for their growth,” nutritionist Mehreen Bilal said, adding that children required food items containing milk, egg and meat because their muscles, height and bones were growing but a majority of people could not afford them.
“Majority of the people feed children bread and rice but this doesn’t fulfill the basic requirement of a child for proper growth,” Bilal said.
She said children in middle and upper classed also ate unhealthy and processed food items like nuggets and cupcakes which also caused malnutrition.
“The government should provide supplementation to the affected children,” Bilal said, “to overcome deficiencies like iron, and high protein fortified serials and food items.”
