A new fight against malnutrition is being launched by The Department for International Development (DFID), focussing on the six countries that are home to half of all undernourished children under five in the world.
The new strategy will address the devastating impact that malnutrition has on life-expectancy, health and long-term productivity, and will have a direct impact on the life chances of 12 million children by 2015.
This comes ahead of a major international conference, organised by DFID, where new proposals will be laid out to get the Millennium Development Goals back on track. The goals form a blueprint for governments and development organisations to improve the lives of the world's poorest. Nutrition has an impact on almost all the goals – from maternal mortality to child health, education and gender equality.
The nutrition strategy sets out a range of immediate and longer-term measures to reach young children in the critical first 1,000 days from conception. This is the key window in which malnutrition has to be tackled - beyond a child's second birthday, harmful effects cannot be reversed.
Efforts will be focussed on Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Each country will draft an action plan to address the particular challenges of local conditions. India's will be the first, published later this year. India remains home to 40 percent of the world's malnourished children. DFID will invest an additional
