Category Archives: Nutrition and development

Peter Greaves obituary

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My friend Peter Greaves, who has died aged 89, was a health and nutrition officer for Unicef whose work made a huge difference to children’s lives around the world. He was an early advocate of low-cost interventions including immunisation, oral rehydration and breastfeeding.

While he was Unicef’s chief nutrition adviser in the mid-1980s, he managed to get Unicef and the World Health Organization to agree on the final draft of The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. This document helped transform global maternal care policies.

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‘We could have lost her’: Zimbabwe’s children go hungry as crisis deepens

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As food shortages worsen due to drought and the economic insecurity of lockdown, one in three children are malnourished

Baby Grace lies quietly in the clinical ward under the watchful gaze of her mother, Rose Mapeka. Her parched skin, which hangs off her tiny body, and the milkiness of her eyes, show only too clearly that the 18-month-old is undernourished.

Grace is lucky to be alive. Health workers in Kuwadzana, a high-density suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, identified her as needing immediate hospital treatment for malnutrition during their home visits to the city’s nursing mothers.

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‘I know they aren’t healthy’: the energy drink craze sweeping Afghanistan

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From children in Kabul to Taliban chiefs, the sweet, caffeine-heavy drinks are wildly popular, defying fears on nutrition

They are sold outside schools, in hospital lobbies, on street corners and in every supermarket; served at wedding receptions and ministerial meetings, while television adverts and billboards praise their qualities. 

Energy drinks have taken over Afghanistan, and the high-caffeine sweet beverages are enjoyed by all ages – including toddlers and pregnant mothers – without much attention being paid to potential health risks.

In a busy Kabul neighbourhood, Salim Wahidi, 22, has dozens of different brands stacked up next to his small roadside stand. The supplies run out fast. 

“We sell a couple of hundred each day, but that’s not even much because there are so many vendors like me,” he says, sharing one of the drinks with his 13-year-old cousin, Mustafa, who works with him. “People love energy drinks, it’s often their first choice. Every child drinks them, every adult.”

Awareness of potential health hazards is low

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Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in

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Civil society has outperformed the state in helping to feed India’s poorest. It should be seen as ally not enemy

The highways connecting India’s overcrowded cities to the villages had not seen anything like it since the time of partition 73 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of workers were on the move, walking back to their villages with their possessions bundled on their heads.

On 24 March, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide 21-day lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. States sealed their borders, and transport came to a halt. With no trains or buses to take them home, India’s rural-to-urban migrant population, estimated at a staggering 120 million, took to the roads. On 5 April a statement from the home ministry said 1.25 million people moving between states had been put up in camps and shelters.

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‘They are starving’: women in India’s sex industry struggle for survival

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Exclusion from government Covid-19 relief has left many reliant on private food donations, as fears raised over protection from transmission after lockdown

Rasheeda Bibi has five rupees to her name. A worker in India’s sex industry, she lives in the narrow lanes of Kolkata’s Kalighat red light area with her three children in a room she rents for 620 rupees (£6) a month.

As a thunderstorm rages through the city, Bibi worries about the leaky roof of her small room.

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‘Millions hang by a thread’: extreme global hunger compounded by Covid-19

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Coronavirus ‘potentially catastrophic’ for nations already suffering food insecurity caused by famine, migration and unemployment

The warning from the World Food Programme (WFP) that an extra 265 million people could be pushed into acute food insecurity by Covid-19, almost doubling last year’s total, is based on a complex combination of factors.

WFP’s latest warning underlines the increasing concern among experts in the field that for many the biggest impact will not be the disease, but the hunger hanging off its coat tails.

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‘She can’t say no’: the Ugandan men demanding to be breastfed

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A study is looking into the coercive practice in Uganda, amid calls for the government to address the issue

Jane’s* husband likes breast milk. “He says he likes the taste of it, and that it helps him in terms of his health. He feels good afterwards,” said the 20-year-old from Uganda, who has a six-month-old baby.

Jane said her husband started asking for her milk the night she came home from the hospital after giving birth. “He said it was to help me with the milk flow. I felt it was OK.”

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Fighting climate crisis by avoiding meat ignores poor countries’ needs – report

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Study recommends move away from ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to reducing carbon footprint

A “one-size-fits-all” solution to addressing the climate crisis through our diets could be unhelpful, as how we eat affects the environment in different ways depending on where we live and how our food is sourced, according to a new report.

Although reducing the consumption of meat and animal-based products globally could lower greenhouse gas emissions, it could also have adverse impacts on people’s health and nutrition in some countries, according to a report published online in the Global Environmental Change journal on Monday.

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This porridge is just right: homemade baby food that’s big business in India | Amrita Gupta

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Entrepreneurs are cooking up wholesome alternatives to sugary baby formulas in a country where only one baby in 10 gets the recommended nutrition

When her baby was six months old, Dr Hemapriya Natesan found herself appalled by the sugary commercial baby food available. With her mother, she began to make batches of mullaikatiya sathumaavu, a traditional porridge for weaning infants in Tamil Nadu, southern India.

It’s a painstaking 10-day process with more than 15 grains, lentils and nuts. Many of the ingredients are first sprouted, then sun-dried in the sweltering heat before being slow-roasted, ground and sieved.

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‘The country could fall apart’: drought and despair in Afghanistan

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As a funding appeal languishes, conflict, poverty and the worst drought for a decade have left millions facing desperate hunger

Shafiqa watches closely over her six-month-old niece. Lying on a bundle of fabric, Maryam’s legs jut out, thin and pale. When they arrived at hospital two weeks ago, she could hardly breathe. Her body was swollen with malnutrition, her lips and fingers were blue.

There are 24 children being treated at Mofleh paediatric hospital’s malnutrition ward, on the outskirts of Herat city, western Afghanistan. Mothers and aunts lean next to hospital beds, some rocking tiny babies back and forth.

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Leading UK child health body under fire over baby milk sponsorship

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Royal College of Paediatrics urged to rethink conference funding amid claims deal contravenes World Health Organization code

The Royal College of Paediatrics has been accused of breaching World Health Organization guidance after it accepted sponsorship funding from baby formula companies.

More than 100 medics and 13 health groups have written to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), urging it to drop Nestlé, Nutricia and Danone from the list of sponsors for its first international conference, to be held in Cairo on 29 January.

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The world in 2018: how much do you know? – quiz

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The year began with the Oxfam scandal and ended with a withering verdict on the food we eat. What do you remember?

Allegations of harassment at aid agencies and charities were frequent in 2018. Which organisation was branded 'a boys' club' by one employee?

UN Women

UNAids

Oxfam GB

ActionAid

Students in Cape Town scored a world first by creating a bio-brick from which substance?

Human saliva

Cow's milk

Horse manure

Human urine

Which singer came out in support of a Brexit-beleaguered Theresa May, suggesting the PM's gender made her a target for unfair criticism?

Lady Gaga

Paloma Faith

Kate Bush

Rae Morris

In a report condemning the 'diabolical state' of our diets, nutritionists found that more than four in 10 children worldwide consume what daily?

Chocolate

Cake

Crisps

Sugary drinks

Researchers at Harvard University believe it may be possible to protect countries in the global south from climate change using what?

A gigantic sunshade in the sky

Blanket distribution of sunscreen

A gigantic heat-absorbing sponge

Tibetan prayer beads

Which of the following food staples is threatened by a virulent fungus that could wipe it out of existence?

Wheat

Potatoes

Bananas

Chocolate chip cookies

Scientists working in Tanzania have developed an innovative method of diagnosing tuberculosis – involving the use of what?

Giant pandas

Giant armadillos

Giant frogs

Giant rats

In a speech on equality at the UN, which actor said she was tired of 'being undervalued, undermined and disrespected, because of my gender'?

Sienna Miller

Nicole Kidman

Gal Gadot

Emma Watson

Ethiopian girl band Yegna made headlines after losing UK aid funding. To which British girl band have they been compared?

Girls Aloud

The Spice Girls

The Saturdays

Sugababes

To which of the following did the Trump administration NOT make aid funding cuts in 2018?

Abortion services

Palestinians

Polio

Pakistan

10 and above.

Take a bow, you're a bonafide newshound!

7 and above.

My, my, now that was impressive – you really didn't miss much in 2018, did you?

4 and above.

A solid effort. Let no one say you ignored the headlines in 2018

0 and above.

Oops. It would seem the world passed you by somewhat in 2018. Was it all that talk of Brexit and Trump?

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