Nutrition

Nutrition for Growth event

Helpdesk Report

On Saturday 8 June 2013, the Department for International Development (DFID) held a Nutrition for Growth event. It brought together  governments, civil society, business and science together to reverse the neglect of nutrition. Launched by the Prime Minister, and co-hosted with Brazil and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, this event marked a game changing moment in global efforts to tackle under-nutrition and could change millions of lives. At the event, world leaders signed a global agreement that will prevent millions of infant deaths, and boost the life chances of millions more, by equipping the developing world with the means to beat malnutrition.

A compact was endorsed by 90 stakeholders (made up of partners, businesses, scientific and civil society groups) which commits to:

  • Improve the nutrition of 500 million pregnant women and young children
  • Reduce the number of under-fives who are stunted by an further 20 million
  • Save the lives of at least 1.7 million children by preventing stunting, increasing breastfeeding and better treatment of severe and acute malnutrition

It also secured:

  • Financial commitments by donors, philanthropy and CSOs included new commitments of up to £2.7 billion to tackle under-nutrition up to 2020
  • An estimated £12.5 billion for improved nutrition outcomes from nutrition sensitive investments in agriculture, social protection and water, sanitation and hygiene
  • A pledge from 27 businesses to improve the nutrition, and consequently the productivity and health, of over 927,000 members of their workforces in more than 80 countries
  • New partnerships between business and science to research new solutions and scale effective technologies
  • Commitments from 14 governments to scale up their national nutrition plans, and many announced targets for reductions in stunting.

The UK promised a total of £655m for nutrition specific programme spend, which includes a £375m core offer (a tripling of 2010 levels), and the remainder for leveraging others. We also committed on nutrition sensitive programmes. All of this means a step change for us on nutrition, with significant new money to scale up nutrition programmes both specific and nutrition–sensitive.

The following resources are linked from the Department for International Development (DFID) website:

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