ADVOCACY IN PRACTICE

PRIORITY ACTIONS THAT CAN BEST IMPROVE NUTRITION

After a lifetime of work in this field, I am more and more convinced that to bridge the nutritional divide, we have to attend to non-nutritional divides.

I propose ten groups of actions and their respective indicators that should be considered as a matter of priority:

1. Food Security (outcome indicator): Physical, economic and social access to a balanced diet for every child, woman and man, based on a life-cycle approach.

2. Water Security: Safe drinking water and adequate water for agriculture, industry and the maintenance of the ecosystem.

3. Literacy and "Techniracy": Total literacy and attention to quality improvements in education, ranging from the pre-school to university education; special actions to empower the illiterate and semi-literate women and men with technical skills; abolition of child labour so that children can go to school, and actions to prevent adolescent girls from becoming school dropouts.

4. Health Security: Provision of gender sensitive primary health care services; control of all major preventable diseases including malaria, tuberculosis, preventable blindness, and eradication of disease-preventable diseases; reduction in birth and death rates and an increase in average life expectancy; reduction of infant and maternal mortality rates and in the incidence of low birth weight; provision of appropriate services for working mothers and enabling them to exclusively breastfeed for six months; fight against HIV/AIDS; and special attention to the physically and mentally handicapped.

5. Ecological Security: Conservation and enhancement of life supporting systems like land, water, forests, bio-diversity, oceans and the atmosphere; efficient harvesting and use of rain water; recycling of solid and liquid wastes and composting of all organic wastes; safe disposal of hospital wastes; bio-environmental control of malaria; preventive action to mitigate the potential adverse effects of climate change and of rising sea levels.

6. Livelihood Security: Transition from unskilled to skilled work; combined attention to rural on-farm and non-farm employment, as well as to micro-enterprises supported by micro-credit; a new deal for the self-employed through the provision of appropriate technology, training, a technical-infrastructure and producer-focused domestic and external trade.

7. Energy Security: Building of sustainable energy systems with concurrent attention to thermal, hydro, nuclear and renewable forms of energy (wind, solar, biogas and biomass); energy use efficiency and self-sufficiency on the farm, as well as in the industrial and domestic sectors.

8. Gender Equity: Engendering all areas of public policy, stern action against female foeticide that leads to distorted sex ratios in society, and provision of support services to working women (e.g. day care), taking into account the multiple burden on a woman's day to day life.

9. Folk, classical and modern art, culture, drama: Creation of awareness and appreciation of people's cultural heritage and revitalisation of their cultural traditions, and dying arts and crafts; respecting animal rights, as well as diversity and pluralism in human communities.

10. Technological leapfrogging and providing the basic conditions essential for enhanced national and foreign investment: Rapid progress in biotechnology as well as information, space, nuclear and renewable energy technologies and launching a movement for fostering greater public understanding of science and promoting a new social contract between scientists and society; providing equal attention to connectivity and content in an effort to bridge the digital divide; blending traditional wisdom with frontier science and technology in order to develop and disseminate ecotechnologies rooted in the principles of ecology, economics, gender, social equity and employment generation; including access to appropriate technologies in basic minimum needs programmes; and attention to training, technical-infrastructure and domestic and external trade.

Note from the Editor: We are delighted to announce that Professor Swaminathan has most generously offered to host the ACC/SCN’s 30th Session (2003) in Chennai. The Session will follow immediately after the Asian Congress of Nutrition.