Following is an excerpt of an article by Dr. David Fleming, vice president of Public Health Impact at PATH which originally appeared on the Global Food For Thought blog.
The world faces a triple burden of malnutrition. Acute and chronic undernutrition contribute to the deaths of some 3 million children each year. More than 2 billion people suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which compromise immune systems and physical and cognitive development. And now obesity is contributing to a host of health problems, from diabetes to heart disease.
In contrast to many other health-related issues, malnutrition is 100 percent preventable. And solutions to address it don’t lie only—or even primarily—with the health care system. Many people don’t have access to doctors, but everybody eats, and most people get their food through the private sector. As we consider how to solve the problems of under- and overnutrition, we need to engage those who are most integrally related to nutrition—the food and agriculture industries. By partnering with the global health sector, these industries have the opportunity to simultaneously develop the innovations needed to help solve these problems while growing their bottom line.