Donors providing poor quality food to children!
Monday, 18 October 2010
From Fazle Rashid
NEW YORK, Oct 17: Food aid of uncertain quality is pouring in unabated for hundreds of thousands of malnourished children in poor countries. Foods are also harmful. Donor countries are providing flour mixed with corn and wheat with soya that do not meet international standards.
Children in Haiti, Pakistan and Niger are receiving poorer quality blends that are failing to help them gain weight, an analyst said. Medicins sans Frontiers International said: "Foods we would never give our own children are being sent overseas as food aid for most vulnerable children. This double standard must stop".
Pressure on prices have led to a deterioration in food quality.
World Food Programme, WHO and UNICEF in a letter to the European Commission underscored the urgency of switching to ready to use foods. The WFP said: "There is an understanding of what we have to do." The biggest challenge is to provide ready to use food and funding it because it is not the cheapest.
A study in Nigeria revealed that children fed with Corn-soya blend food required hospitalisation. The vast majority of food provided by aid agencies is either donated in kind or paid through money supplied by international donor countries, an analyst said. There has been a shift from more expensive milk powder, made worse by donors demand to control costs since the 2008 financial crisis.
NEW YORK, Oct 17: Food aid of uncertain quality is pouring in unabated for hundreds of thousands of malnourished children in poor countries. Foods are also harmful. Donor countries are providing flour mixed with corn and wheat with soya that do not meet international standards.
Children in Haiti, Pakistan and Niger are receiving poorer quality blends that are failing to help them gain weight, an analyst said. Medicins sans Frontiers International said: "Foods we would never give our own children are being sent overseas as food aid for most vulnerable children. This double standard must stop".
Pressure on prices have led to a deterioration in food quality.
World Food Programme, WHO and UNICEF in a letter to the European Commission underscored the urgency of switching to ready to use foods. The WFP said: "There is an understanding of what we have to do." The biggest challenge is to provide ready to use food and funding it because it is not the cheapest.
A study in Nigeria revealed that children fed with Corn-soya blend food required hospitalisation. The vast majority of food provided by aid agencies is either donated in kind or paid through money supplied by international donor countries, an analyst said. There has been a shift from more expensive milk powder, made worse by donors demand to control costs since the 2008 financial crisis.