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Agricultural productivity and food security key to improve human health in Africa
By Sofia Tillo
25 November 2010 [MediaGlobal]: The old saying that “you are what you eat” is finding new meaning at the United Nations. With food security and access to nutrition in focus for the Millennium Development Goals, all eyes are on the billion people worldwide who live in hunger as a result of poverty.
Over a quarter of those living in hunger are located in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, most experts agree that nothing will be accomplished without massive restructuring of Africa’s agricultural sector.
New research indicates that, far from being mainly a matter of economics and poverty, food production has a deep impact across the continent’s health challenges. From maternal health to HIV/AIDS, more productive agriculture and better food might be the boost African nations need to improve health and life expectancy across the continent.
With this in mind, Professor Per Pinstrup-Andersen visited UN Headquarters this week to present the results of his latest research at an event promoted by the UN University’s “World Wide in New York Series.” Pinstrup-Andersen, internationally renowned in the fields of nutrition and public policy, spoke to MediaGlobal about how food systems deeply impact health in sub-Saharan Africa. From agricultural workers’ low productivity due to poor health and nutrition, to the huge time and effort required for food preparation in Africa’s rural areas, “The food system begins and ends with health and nutrition,” said Pinstrup-Andersen.
At the crux of Pinstrup-Andersen’s work is the idea that health challenges in Africa are in fact strongly rooted in the continent’s system of food production. “Half of all deaths in developing countries could have been avoided if the people who died had had good nutrition,” said Pinstrup-Andersen.
The fact that malnutrition often plays a crucial role in people’s inability to overcome illness, from AIDS to diarrhea, does not feature as prominently in statistics as it should since, “malnutrition is something that comes from before,” Pinstrup-Andersen added. “People might be debilitated by malnutrition for years but health workers will attribute death to the most recent illness”
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