The Way Forward
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Box 5.1
Strategy on Nutritional Security Recommended by China’s Center for Disease Prevention and Control China’s Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) piloted a study in five poor counties that examined 1,500 children divided into a treatment group and a control group. Babies 6- to 12-months-old in the treatment group were given a nutritional sachet every day until they were 24-months-old. The formula of the nutrition package included 10 grams of whole soybean powder, fortified with 6 milligrams of iron, 4.1 milligrams of zinc, 385 milligrams of calcium, 0.2 milligrams of vitamin B2, and 280 international units of vitamin D3. At 24 months, the prevalence of anemia in the treatment group was 45 percent lower than in the control group, the children were 1.3 centimeters taller, and their development quotient score was 1.7–3.4 points higher. A follow-up study found that the differences in intelligence score were sustained through age 6, with the development quotient scores of the treatment group 3.1–4.5 score higher than the scores of the control group. The CDC advocates the inclusion of the following components into China’s social and economic development plan and poverty alleviation plan: • Introduction of complementary feeding for poor children • Establishment of a national food fortification program • Scaling up of the provision of effective fortified food products for pregnant women and children under age 2 • Establishment of an indicator system for nutrition security (such as the prevalence of stunting and anemia among children at age 3 or among pregnant women). It also supports the integration of several indicators into the national statistical report. Source: Chen 2009.
make a compelling case for nutrition and health interventions. Interventions for extremely poor people should include the following components: • Free prenatal care, nutrition, and information for pregnant women in order to increase safe delivery and the health of the baby; • Subsidies for transportation of poor women for routine health checkups and for hospital delivery;