Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Cost? (Directions in Development)

Action against malnutrition is needed more than ever. An additional US$10.3 billion a year is required from public resources to mount a successful attack against undernutrition on a worldwide scale. This would benefit over 360 million children in the 36 countries with the highest burden of undernutrition—home to 90 percent of the stunted children worldwide—and prevent 1.1 million child deaths. Since early childhood offers a special window of opportunity to improve nutrition, the bulk of the investment needs to be targeted between pre-pregnancy until two years of age.Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Cost? offers suggestions on how to raise these resources. This worthy investment will yield high returns in the form of thriving children, healthier families, and more productive workers. And it is essential to make progress on the nutrition and child mortality Millennium Development Goals and to protect critical human capital in developing economies. The human and financial costs of further neglect will be very high. This call for greater investment in nutrition is also opportune, at a time when global efforts to strengthen health systems provide a unique opportunity to scale up integrated packages of health and nutrition interventions, with common delivery platforms, and lower costs.Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Cost? has benefited from the expertise of many international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and research institutions. The cooperation of so many practitioners is evidence of a growing recognition of the need to invest in nutrition interventions, and a growing consensus about how to deliver effective programs. This book will be of interest to policy makers, nutritionists, government officials, and all those interested in improving child nutrition and child health.