Engage private sector in nutrition: Lawrence Haddad to Bangladesh

The Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) has pitched for engaging the private sector in improving nutrition condition and showed Bangladesh the way how to do that.

Nurul Islam Hasibbdnews24.com
Published : 7 May 2017, 06:59 PM
Updated : 7 May 2017, 06:59 PM

Lawrence Haddad was talking to bdnews24.com on Sunday on the sidelines of a seminar on nutrition in Dhaka.

“My experience is that you can either engage with the private sector or you can ignore them. If you ignore them in nutrition, then they will just run roughshod of all the regulations and do whatever they want to do,” he said.

The British economist whose main research interests are the intersection of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition has been the Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division before joining the GAIN last year.

He was also the former Director of the world-leading Institute of Development Studies (IDS).

Despite the massive economic growth, Bangladesh is famed for a high burden of malnutrition with 36 percent children under-5 is too short for the age or stunted and 33 percent underweight.

A multi-sectoral approach including the engagement of private sector is one of the policies that experts suggest the government overcome the situation.

But private sector remained mostly unregulated resulting in what the Bangladesh Breastfeeding Foundation says gross violation of breastmilk substitute code or BMS code in the country. The code prohibits companies from promoting formula milk to under-2 kids.

Dr Haddad said strengthening the enforcement of regulations is the major area, but that is “difficult” for many countries due to lack of capacities and the “very powerful” businesses.

He suggested to category businesses by three different types based on their activities and act on that.

“Those who do bad things such as violate breastmilk substitute code… just stop them”.

The second group such as mobile phones, he said, would be good for nutrition because of their big reach.

“Mobile phones can give messages about behavioural change. They can give pregnant mothers messages about the benefits of breastfeeding children and babies over six months get a touch of food. And there would be public service announcement in mobile phone”.

He said Bangladesh had done a lot of m-health (mobile health). “But there is no m-nutrition”.

And the third group, he said the horticulture and dairy industry or those who market chicken.

“We need to support them particularly for small and medium businesses. We need to support them so that they can keep the prices low so that poor people can have eggs, milk and meat”.

The GAIN is an international organisation that mobilises public-private partnerships and provides financial and technical support to deliver nutritious foods to those people most at risk of malnutrition. It has an office in Dhaka.