ISLAMABAD: Head of Policy and Advocacy, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Faiz Rasool said the growing population of malnourished households is causing a nutrition and health crisis in the country amid policy gaps and absence of proactive legislation. with a rapidly changing environment. He spoke at a media session co-hosted by the Sustainable Development Institute (SDPI) and GAIN to explore critical aspects of food security, healthy eating and food system communication and their impact on public health and food system sustainability. Faiz Rasool said that almost the entire population of the country constantly faces threats to their health due to poor access to healthy food, with 18.5% of them being malnourished. “Malnutrition and obesity are concurrent health risks in the country as Pakistan faces the double burden of malnutrition leading to worsening disease burden due to unhealthy diet. Moreover, 6/10 of the population’s diseases are related to food-related problems and poor diet,” he said. As the country faces nutrition and food security challenges, there is no nutrition policy in the country as the affected districts have not focused on creating such a document, he added. The GAIN official highlighted that there are serious policy gaps in the National Food Security Policy approved in 2018 and no guidelines are available to address nutrition issues. According to him, 3.1 billion people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet, i.e. almost 42% of the total world population. He pointed out that there are food authorities in all four provinces of the country, with food safety being the second most pressing issue in the country after nutrition. “Food security policy lacks a gender dimension to address food security issues faced by women, while no youth, the largest segment of the country’s population, engages in the policy, contributing in almost all sectors,” he said. Faiz Rasoool mentioned that food security is a provincial matter after devolution, while the contribution of provinces to the national food security policy is questionable. “Our children will face 20% obesity along with malnutrition and risk of stunting as 125,000 children are affected by unsafe food,” he said. Pakistan’s Food System Transformation Pathway Paper was prepared and submitted in line with its global commitment under international conventions, but no progress has been made so far, he added. “Pakistan, the only country in the world that has the current Minister of Food Security as the 11th convener, but many regional countries still have only one convener, but we have repeatedly changed focal persons in the last three years. Countries like Africa are making better progress in this regard due to the consistent work of officials designated for this position,” he said. He also mentioned that the food security policy also lacks the link between climate change and food security, which should be widely highlighted by the media as increasing economic and ecological vulnerability due to environmental degradation becomes a heavy tool for food security in the country. In response to media queries, he said GAIN had consulted relevant departments in the national and provincial consultations led by the Ministry of Food Security. “The media should push policy makers for critical legislation on relevant issues like nutrition policy while the entire scenario in all areas has changed rapidly,” said Faiz Rasool. The National Food System Dashboard provides a complete data inventory, with Pakistan and Nigeria being the only countries to offer sub-national level data, while efforts are underway to include district level data as well. GAIN, he said, has prepared SOPs for food safety sampling and sampling for the three federal units and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. For the Punjab Food Authority, GAIN has developed modules for nutrition schools to guide small producers towards food safety, he said.
