Moving the Needle on Child Stunting

I’m often asked, sometimes as a statement, whether we can truly move the needle on child stunting in South Africa. The scale is enormous: an estimated 1.5 million of the country’s roughly 6.2 million children under five are affected, and the problem has remained deeply entrenched, hovering in the mid-twenty percent range for decades.

I usually give two answers. The first is that every child growing along his or her normal trajectory is moving the needle for that specific child, 100%. Shifting the national statistics is a harder challenge, and it will take hard work. Do we know what hard work is needed? Yes, we do. We can learn from other countries that have succeeded.

Being human is an important piece of the puzzle. Parents and communities, no matter what their income status is, are acutely aspirational for their babies, infants and young children’s futures. When they are made aware of the importance of specific foods, daily, for their babies and children to grow and develop to their full potential, they will make efforts to find ways to find, source and supply it. There is no substitute for this. This is the core of the solution to eliminate stunting in a country.

Globally, babies, infants and children growing up in middle-income households tend to grow and develop along the trajectory they should. That’s because parents in middle- and higher-income households spend more of their income on eggs, dairy, meat, fish and a variety of vegetables, for every meal they prepare.

There are good case studies in the world showing that when lower-income households are made aware of how important it is to include some eggs, dairy, meat, fish and a variety of vegetables in what pregnant moms, breastfeeding moms, babies, infants and children eat every meal, they tend to start putting some of their limited money and resources towards doing it. They start to think and plan accordingly.

Therefore, educating and training caregivers, parents and communities in areas where we work increasingly becomes part of our focus and purpose. Knowledge is key and we intend to change the way South Africans think about “growth nutrients” for growing children.

In the meantime, we will keep working hard to produce and make available intervention meals, to deliver some of the growth nutrients that growing children so desperately need to reach their full potential.

PS: Next time I’ll tell you more about our brand new linear growth “Track-and-Trace” device. Watch this space!