WHO advocates nutrition-directed initiatives, pointing to the potential to save 3.7 million lives

06 Sep 2019 --- The right investment in nutrition-directed initiatives could save 3.7 million lives by 2025, according to a new report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations (UN). Health services must integrate a stronger focus on ensuring optimum nutrition at each life stage, according to WHO’s report, entitled Essential Nutrition Actions: Mainstreaming Nutrition. The advocated initiatives include the provision of iron and folic acid supplements as part of antenatal care and regularly dispensing public advice on healthy dietary practices.

WHO identifies health care as the foundation of universal health coverage and the publication’s primary purpose is to provide a compilation of actions to address malnutrition in all its forms. In particular it should be in a concise and user-friendly format to help in the decision-making processes for the integration of nutrition interventions in national health policies, strategies and plans based on country-specific needs and global priorities.

Health care is a whole-of-society approach to health and well-being, states WHO.“Health care is a whole-of-society approach to health and well-being, centered on the needs and preferences of individuals, families and communities. Nutrition is a foundation for health and well-being for all, leaving no one behind, and a critical component of primary health care, through its promotion and prevention, addressing its determinants and a people-centered approach,” states the organization.

Multisectoral actions outside of the health space, such as the stewardship, advocacy and regulatory functions of health ministries, help achieve healthier populations, notes WHO.

Healthier populations are achieved through multisectoral actions that are not limited to health systems alone, though often using the stewardship, advocacy and regulatory functions of health ministries, notes WHO. Optimal nutrition for individual health and development bridges interventions by health systems to improve the health of populations.

Interventions addressing health through the life-course (covering women, men, infants, children, adolescents and older persons) further contribute to the delivery of integrated primary health care, the organization highlights. A “life-course approach” is pegged as crucial in operationalizing the worldwide commitment to people-centred primary health care.

WHO-funded public health research
Last month, the long-awaited findings of WHO’s assessment of microplastics in the environment were published, with the organization indicating that the impact on human health appears to be minimal at current levels. At the same time, WHO also stressed that it was working from “limited information” and that there is a pressing need to establish more standardized methods for measuring microplastic particles in water; more studies on the sources and occurrence of microplastics in freshwater; and the efficacy of different treatment processes.

In the same month, the UN body released a report stating that increasing omega 3 consumption has little or no effect on the risk of Type 2 diabetes, backed by research from the University of East Anglia. WHO commissioned this systematic review ahead of the imminent update of its dietary guidance on fats. Other measures of diabetes risk – including blood glucose, insulin and glycated hemoglobin – were unchanged by fish oil consumption. The researchers maintain that people should not be encouraged to take omega 3 oil supplements for the prevention or treatment of diabetes.

WHO has been active in its calls for sugar reduction, which the organization states is crucial to prevent childhood obesity. Global Nutrition Director of the WHO Dr. Francesco Branca called for an action to further reduce sugar in food products to add to the prevention of overweight and non-communicable diseases.

By Benjamin Ferrer