Pakistan’s malnutrition, food safety crises demand urgent policy interventions to protect population at risk: Faiz Rasool

ISLAMABAD, Sep 13 (SABAH): Head of Policy and Advocacy, The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Faiz Rasool on Friday said the increasing population of undernourished households is driving the nutritional and health crises in the country amid policy gaps and absence of proactive legislation in line with rapidly changing environment.

He was addressing a media debriefing session jointly organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and GAIN to explore critical aspects around communicating food security, healthy diet and food system and its impact on public health and sustaining the food systems.

Faiz Rasool said almost of the country’s population is persistently facing threat to their health due to poor access to healthy diet, whereas 18.5% of them were undernourished. “Malnourishment and obesity as health risks are simultaneously existing in the country, as Pakistan is facing double burden of malnutrition resulting into aggravated disease burden due to unhealthy diet. Moreover, 6/10 of population diseases are related to food related problems and poor quality diet,” he said.

Since, the country is facing nutrition and food safety challenges there is no nutrition policy in the country as there has been no focus of the quarters concerned on establishing such document, he added. The GAIN official underscored that there are serious policy gaps and no guidance available to address nutrition challenge in the National Food Security Policy approved in 2018. Globally, he said 3.1 billion people almost 42% of the total world population are unable to afford healthy diet. He pointed out that there were food authorities in all the four provinces of the country, whereas food safety was the most serious issue after nutrition in the country. “Food security policy lacks gender aspect to counter food safety challenges faced by women, whereas no youth the largest part of the country’s population is addressed in the policy which is contributing in almost every sector,” he said.

Faiz Rasoool mentioned that food security is a provincial subject after devolution, whereas the input of the provinces on National Food Security Policy is questionable. “Our children will face 20% obesity alongwith malnutrition and stunting risks as 125,000 children are getting impacted from unsafe food,” he said.

Pakistan’s food system transformation pathway document has been prepared and submitted as per its global commitment under international conventions but no progress has been made so far, he added. “Pakistan only country in the world having current Secretary Ministry of Food Security as 11th convener but in many regional countries only one convener has been serving throughout but we have repeatedly changed the focal persons in the last three years. Countries like Africa have better progress in that regard due to consistent working of officials designated on this position,” he said. He also mentioned that the climate change and food security nexus is also missing in the Food Security Policy which the media should extensively highlight as growing economic and ecological vulnerability due to environmental degradation is taking a heavy tool on the food security of the country. 

Replying to media queries, he said the GAIN had held consultations with relevant departments at national and provincial consultations led by the Ministry of Food Security. “Media should move policy makers on critical legislation on pertinent issues like nutrition policy, whereas the entire scenario in all domains have transformed rapidly,” Faiz Rasool said.

The National Food System Dashboard provides a complete data inventory, with Pakistan and Nigeria being the only countries offering subnational data, whereas efforts are underway to include district-level data as well. The GAIN, he said has prepared SOPs for food safety sampling and collection for three federating units and Azad Jammu and Kashmir. For the Punjab Food Authority, GAIN developed modules for Nutrition Schools to guide small-scale producers on food safety, he said.