Bread for the World Applauds Malnutrition Focus at the Olympics Global Hunger Event | WPN World People News

On the final day of the Olympics, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer hosted a high-level meeting to highlight child malnutrition.

“I am grateful that Great Britain and Brazil are using the Olympics to bring global attention to the importance of maternal and child nutrition,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “We are pleased about their focus on achieving the goal recently adopted by the United Nation’s World Health Assembly to reduce stunting [shorter height for age] by 40 percent—that’s 70 million children— by 2025.”

The Global Hunger Event comes on the heels of alarming new reports that food prices could rise dramatically because of the historic drought in the United States and poor weather-related harvests in other parts of the world.

Beckmann went on to say, “It will be important for the global community to take action in coming weeks to ensure that poor and vulnerable people, particularly pregnant women and young children, are protected from a spike in food prices so that this short term crisis does not have long-term consequences. And it will require an enormous commitment by all nations to achieve the stunting goal.”

Nutrition, particularly during the 1,000 day window from pregnancy to age 2, is critical to child survival—an estimated 2.6 million children die each year as a result of malnutrition. Poor fetal growth along with chronic malnutrition early in life causes permanent damage, including diminished intellectual capacity, impaired immune function, and stunting.

Source: Bread for the World