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Child growth key to human development

"Child development is the foundation of human development," Mr. Gautam told nutrition experts and agency leaders who gathered at the World Bank for the yearly meeting of the United Nations Sub-Committee on Nutrition. Speaking at the Symposium on Nutrition Stocktaking and Challenges for the 21st Century, he urged those present to strongly make the case for monitoring child growth -- from before birth to two years old -- as the standard by which nations measure economic progress.

Families, communities and countries must be empowered to monitor child growth and development, he said. Mr. Gautam added that nutrition -- and malnutrition in particular -- is a subject that had been much studied but not enough acted upon.

"Although we know better than ever before what needs to be done, and what approaches work, it has been hard to arouse compassion and even harder to arouse solidarity for long-term development," he said, challenging nutrition experts present to come up with new goals, targets and strategies to eliminate malnutrition as a public health problem within a generation.

Mr. Gautam said that meeting participants -- including United Nations agencies, donor governments and non-governmental organizations -- should increase their focus on malnutrition in the next few years and see it as part of the larger issue of making substantial improvements in early childhood development as a whole.

He said UNICEF's child rights-based approach would guide the agency's advocacy around nutrition and early childhood development. "We should invoke every possible argument to achieve rapid progress."

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