Global Nutrition Report

The Global Nutrition Report is a report card on the world’s nutrition—globally, regionally, and country by country—and on efforts to improve it. The Global Nutrition Report is an independently produced annual stock-take of the state of the world’s nutrition. The report tracks global nutrition targets on maternal, infant and young child nutrition and on diet related Non-Communicable Diseases adopted by member states of the World Health Organization as well as governments’ delivery against their commitments. It aims to make it easier for governments and other stakeholders to make - and deliver on - high impact commitments to end malnutrition in all its forms.

The GNR is an annual publication and the first series was published in 2014. It is delivered by an Independent Expert Group and guided at a strategic level by a Stakeholder Group, whose members also review the Report.

Global Nutrition Report 2022 - An overview

The 2022 Global Nutrition Report: Stronger commitments for greater action’ sets out the role of accountability and its ability to transform action to tackle the nutrition crisis. It analyses the hard work underway and emphasises the role of every stakeholder to demonstrate why coordination is the only way we can deliver sustainable nutrition outcomes.

Key findings

1. An unprecedented number of commitments to take action on nutrition worldwide have been made, including over US$ 42.6 billion in financial investments.
   • 198 stakeholders from 84 countries made 433 commitments with 897 goals aiming to improve nutrition; progress will be measured against the goals. Most were made by 78 country governments (in a non-donor role), followed by 56 CSOs, 30 private sector businesses, 21 donors, seven international organisations and seven academic institutions. Less than half of all commitments were joint, with more than two-thirds of government commitments submitted on behalf of multiple entities.
   • There was substantial mobilisation from stakeholders to address nutrition impacts related to Covid-19. A quarter (212, 24%) of all goals were reported to be developed in response to the pandemic, with no such goals committed by the private sector.
2. Stakeholders focus strongly on supporting governance and undernutrition, but little attention is paid to poor diets, obesity and diet-related NCDs or food and nutrition security.
   • Almost half (408, 45%) of all commitment goals were categorised as enabling, focused on creating an enabling environment for nutrition action. ‘Leadership and governance’ was the most prominent type, recognising bold political leadership and good governance as foundations for delivering effective nutrition policies.
   • Roughly a third (260, 29%) of all goals were policy actions and, of those, most focused on improving ‘nutrition care services’; yet these were still relatively low overall (9% of all goals). Lower attention was given by governments to transforming domestic food systems through the ‘food supply chain’ and ‘food environment’ policies, yet we see notable involvement in these areas from the private sector in their goals.
   • The rest of the goals were impact (229, 26%), with a strong focus on ‘undernutrition’; this tallies with low and middle-income countries being mostly targeted. By contrast, ‘diet’ (6% of all goals), ‘obesity and diet-related NCDs’ (2.6%) and ‘food and nutrition security’ (1.6%) received the least attention.
3. A far larger proportion of commitments align with the global nutrition targets on maternal, infant and young child nutrition than diet-related NCDs.
• Stakeholders self-reported which of the World Health Assembly global nutrition targets their commitments aligned to, with many commitments often aligned with multiple targets. Most commitments aligned with the maternal, infant and young child nutrition (MIYCN) targets. 
• On aggregate, we see that 33 (8%) commitments were aligned only with diet-related NCD targets (76% of which were made by the private sector), as opposed to 177 (41%) commitments aligning only with MIYCN targets.
• The private sector is the only stakeholder group that reported fewer commitments as aligning with the MIYCN targets, and instead aligned the majority of its commitments with the diet-related NCD targets.
4. The SMARTness of commitment goals made
   • Around a quarter (24%) of commitment goals ranked high for SMARTness, 16% were upper moderate, 31% were lower moderate and less than a third (30%) were low. This pattern varied across stakeholders, with almost half (46%) of donor actions and 41% of CSO actions being low in SMARTness, and therefore not trackable; by contrast, only 13% of the private sector goals were low.

Key recommendations

1. We need a far broader constituency of actors to step up worldwide and make commitments to improve nutrition that can be accounted for.
2. We need commitments to reflect sustained and increased external and domestic public and private financing for nutrition that can be easily tracked.
3.  We need far greater attention on food security that truly includes nutrition security in commitment-making.
4. We need commitments that will bring transformative policies for our food system and deliver universal access to healthy, affordable and sustainably produced food.
5. We need commitments that promote universal access to nutrition care services that are integrated in the health system.

For the complete report, click here.

GNR 2021 - India profile

• India is 'on course' to meet three of the global nutrition targets for which there was sufficient data to assess progress. 
• No progress has been made towards achieving the target of reducing anaemia among women of reproductive age, with 53.0% of women aged 15 to 49 years now affected.
• There is insufficient data to assess the progress that India has made towards achieving the low birth weight target, nor is there adequate prevalence data.
• India is 'on course' for the exclusive breastfeeding target, with 58.0% of infants aged 0 to 5 months exclusively breastfed. 
• India is 'on course' to meet the target for stunting, but 34.7% of children under 5 years of age are still affected, which is higher than the average for the Asia region (21.8%).
• India has made no progress towards achieving the target for wasting, with 17.3% of children under 5 years of age affected, which is higher than the average for the Asia region (8.9%).
• The prevalence of overweight children under 5 years of age is 1.6% and India is 'on course' to prevent the figure from increasing.
• India has shown limited progress towards achieving the diet-related non-communicable disease (NCD) targets. The country has shown no progress towards achieving the target for obesity, with an estimated 6.2% of adult (aged 18 years and over) women and 3.5% of adult men living with obesity. India's obesity prevalence is lower than the regional average of 10.3% for women and 7.5% for men. At the same time, diabetes is estimated to affect 9.0% of adult women and 10.2% of adult men.

To visit the India Nutrition Profile, click here.

Source : Global Nutrition Report