The ACC/SCN was assigned responsibility, from its inception, for periodically reporting on trends in the world nutrition situation. A review of information available at global and regional level was published in November 1987, as the "First Report on the World Nutrition Situation" (FRWNS). This first report summarized trends over the last twenty-five years, with an assessment of prevalences and numbers of people with inadequate food consumption, and of underweight children. The methods involved interpolation from existing data, aggregated to the level of groups of countries; selected national-level data readily available was used illustratively. The emphasis was on long-term, underlying trends, at regional level.
The present "update" report concentrates on information on recent trends - monthly or annual, 1980 to 1987 - at national and sub-national level. This depends, in the first instance, on compiling the data that have been collected recently in developing countries. Much of the work has involved identifying the existence of suitable nutritional data. These data, from more than 30 countries, have been used to judge likely recent trends in nutrition, which are presented in a reasonably comparable format.
Effects on nutrition of economic recession and structural adjustment became of major concern in the early 1980's. At the SCN session in 1986 a symposium was held on this subject, noting that "improving trends in nutrition may be slowed or even reversed". UNICEF's "Adjustment with a Human Face"1 drew attention to ten country situations in which deterioration was feared. The FRWNS highlighted deterioration in nutrition in the African region, and stagnation in Latin America. Economic stress and drought (in Africa) were considered, at regional level, to be having measurable effects on nutrition.
1 Cornia, G.A., Jolly, R., Stewart, F., 1988. "Adjustment with a Human Face, Volume 2 - Ten Country Case Studies"; Oxford University Press.One important outcome of these concerns was the initiation of an inter-agency (FAO, WHO, UNICEF) programme intended to strengthen food and nutritional surveillance in a wide range of developing countries. This resulted from the proposal of an ACC/SCN working group, which was approved by the SCN in March 1987. The proposal for an inter-agency programme was endorsed by the UNICEF Executive Board in April 1987, so that UNICEF assumed responsibility for raising funds for the inter- agency programme. Initial funding was subsequently provided by the Swiss and Dutch governments. An early objective of this inter-agency programme was to provide rapidly a report on recent trends - updating the ACC/SCN's First Report on the World Nutrition Situation. The ACC/SCN, which has acted as co-ordinator for launching the Inter-agency Food and Nutritional Surveillance (IFNS) programme, agreed to compile this report.
This "Update" report therefore responds both to the need for country-specific, up-to-date information to supplement the First Report, and to the first objective of the inter-agency programme, which was "to produce and analyze existing information on trends in a limited number of specified indicators of food and nutrition at national and sub-national levels".
A substantial funding contribution from the Swiss and Dutch governments, through the IFNS programme, to the production of this report is gratefully acknowledged. Additional funding has been available from SCN funds, provided by SCN member UN agencies.
The ACC/SCN's reports on trends in nutrition fit in with other work by the SCN and its member agencies. Resources available for tackling nutrition problems are being assessed by the SCN, which can then be compared with the extent and distribution of need. Policies in relation to nutrition are regularly reviewed in different sectors - in agriculture, education, and health, for example, and more recently in the context of structural adjustment. Ways of better orienting major policies to benefit food intake, health and nutrition are crucial for long-term solutions to nutrition problems. Further, specific inter- agency programmes are being promoted to address nutrient deficiencies: for vitamin A and iodine deficiencies, to date.
The eventual aim is to see the trends in malnutrition - numbers of people affected as well as prevalences - turn downwards. This would show a dual achievement. First, fundamental human problems - poverty, hunger, and disease - would be coming under control. Second, malnutrition as a problem in its own right, linked as it is to child mortality and constrained development, would be receding. The information in this report will be useful if it contributes to carrying out policies and programmes that advance this cause.
A. Horwitz
Chairman, ACC/SCN
