Malnutrition is a major public health problem in many developing countries. It is one of the major health problems facing women and children in different parts of the world. Due to the fact, children under five years of age were stunted and wasted respectively.
To reduce the problem, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had launched a new website on food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) which serves as a platform for information exchange on nutritional guidelines from across the world.
These guidelines are intended to establish a basis for public food and nutrition, health and agricultural policies and nutrition education programmes to foster healthy eating habits and lifestyles. It also informs the public on which foods and eating habits will provide the nutrients they need to promote overall health and prevent chronic diseases.
In this regard, a consultative discussion had been taken place last week here in Addis Ababa city with regard to identifying the challenges and the good opportunities to provide healthy food, the mechanism to reduce nutrition problems, and thereby to cultivate healthy citizens in this country.
Mesfin Baye (Ph.D), Nutrition Department Head and Lecturer at Bahir-Dar University told The Ethiopian Herald that the key objective of the discussion is to prepare a nutrition guideline which will help to identify the factors and opportunities in order to cultivate healthy citizens across the nation.
Though Ethiopia has still no nutrition guideline, it has been seriously affected by malnutrition, in which various stakeholders and partners join together to develop healthy community in a sustainable manner.
According to Mesfin, stunting is common in his village around Bahir-Dar, in west Gojjam; and it is one of the serious factors which later causes for other consequential diseases. “I don’t know the reasons why stunting is happening in this area where there are enormous productions of food items. But, the reverse is true.”
In fact, shortage of transportation, lack of awareness, poor use of harvesting technology (post production management system), and limitation of food chain among others are serious factors which hinder to modernize the food system in this area for the last several years, Mesfin observed.
Likewise, Tesfaye Hailu, Nutrition Researcher at Ethiopian Public Health Institute, and a Ph.D student at Wageningen University, Netherland, for his part said that healthcare and nutrition system has decisive role to nurture healthy and productive citizens for any country. But, Ethiopia has faced problems with regards to ensuring healthcare and nutrition security at national level.
According to Tesfaye, the program has started here last year by partners, supportive organs, and other pertinent stakeholders to modernize the nutrition system through research that are related to the community’s culture across the country.
Although the program took long time, the country has planned to accomplish the distribution of guidelines to end consumers in the upcoming 2020 fiscal year. To realize this, the society will play crucial role in modernizing the agricultural sector, whereas the media need to promote awareness creation activities throughout the country.
In fact, the incumbent has been taking serious measures specially in improving the agricultural sector. But, it has some limitation on strengthening the development of the sector and its sustainability. The country also needs effective transportation system in terms of product logistics from farm land to end consumers, Tesfay added.
Dlia Sahole, Nutrition Officer at regional Office in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), on his part said that, among the various activities taken by FAO in Ethiopia, the support to reduce food related problems through research based activities has taken the lion-share.
As to him, information gathering and identifying the good opportunities are the major activities that FAO has undertaken over the last one year with the goal to realize today’s first FBDG starter. In this regard, his organization and Wagnigen University provides special food support to Ethiopia.
He added that, Ethiopia is rich in food and natural resources. However, it has some limitation in the use due to shortage of appropriate guideline and low awareness among the society.
Particularly, Ethiopia currently shows lots of progress in agriculture sector; the nutrition guideline will surely play indispensable role to nurture the wellbeing of citizens across the country. In addition to this, appropriate information is crucial for enhancing food production in Ethiopia. But, some limitation also exists in the country with regards to sustainability of conducting research.
In sum, modernizing the agricultural system, using natural resources properly, conducting continuous research, and providing awareness creation trainings to the producers and end consumers will be the way out to achieve the intended goal of ensuring nutrition security at national level, Dlia advised.
The Ethiopian Herald June 1/2019
BY MESERET BEHAILU
