New York- The Government of Nepal is highly committed to improving the nutritional status of children and women as a foundation for future social economic growth and development.

Statement by Rt. Hon. Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, Prime Minister of Nepal, at the High-Level Meeting on Nutrition organized at the sidelines of the Sixty-six Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, 20 September 2011

His Excellency Mr. Mahamadou Issoufou, President of the Republic of Niger

Her Excellency Ms. Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen!

• First of all, I thank the Secretary General for inviting me to this important meeting. I am delighted to share Nepal’s experience on SUN Movement that began last year.

• Chronic and acute malnutrition in Nepal remains at critical levels with wide economic and geographic disparities. Innovative efforts are needed to reach the most marginalized and poorest population groups suffering from malnutrition. We have proven and highly cost-effective solutions that we need to scale them up nationwide.

• Fortunately, we have some successes in Nepal that we can draw upon.  Nepal has made significant progress in reducing under-five mortality from 91 per thousand live births in 2001 to 54 per thousand in 2011, and we are on track to achieve MDG 4. Improving nutrition has played a critical role in bringing child mortality further down in Nepal.

• I am pleased to share with you that Nepal has a strong micronutrients programme.

• Semi-annual Vitamin A Supplementation to pre-school children in the last 15 years has successfully sustained with an over 90 per cent coverage, and has saved lives of children. This is a very good example of community mobilization and strong partnership.  Our focus is now on sustaining this intervention.

• Household consumption of adequately iodized salt has reached 80 per cent in 2011 contributing to brain development of child.  This was possible through continuous awareness campaign, targeting areas with low coverage. Our aim is to attain Universal Salt Iodization target of 90 per cent by 2015.

• Similarly, iron intensification programme has helped to increase significantly the coverage of iron folic acid supplementation to pregnant women, thus reducing anemia among women. Anemia among children under 5 years of age has also come down to 46 per cent in 2011. But, Anemia among young children of 6 to 24 months of age still remains very high. Therefore, the Government of Nepal has already started to address this problem through multiple micronutrient powders distribution linked with the promotion of Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF). Recently, the Government has also made flour fortification at roller mills mandatory with the objective of decreasing iron deficiency in women and children.

• Despite these successful micronutrient programmes, chronic malnutrition continues to be a critical issue.  Latest data shows that stunting, a form of chronic malnutrition has declined to 41 per cent in 2011 from 49 per cent in 2006. However, wasting continues to linger at 11 per cent, and 29 per cent of the children are still underweight. One-fourth of women have low body mass index, a sign of undernutrition. On top of that, there is a serious concern in Nepal of increasing disparities by wealth quintiles and regions. This clearly demonstrates that the scaling up of micronutrient interventions is essential and can contribute to mortality reduction but this is just not enough to effectively tackle chronic malnutrition in Nepal. The Government of Nepal has therefore taken some key steps to fight against the persistently high levels of malnutrition and growing nutrition inequity.  It has adopted a multi-sectoral approach to address the complex set of immediate, underlying and basic causes of under-nutrition – with a particular focus on reaching the marginalized, the poorest and the excluded through social protection measures like child cash grant.

• The Government of Nepal is highly committed to improving the nutritional status of children and women as a foundation for future social economic growth and development. This is also a pre-requisite to achieving all the MDGs, despite the given resource constraints. We appreciate the continuous technical and financial support we have been receiving from our development partners including the UN agencies in this area.

• However, we have a lot more to do and we are committed to do whatever is necessary to address this problem in Nepal. I would like to urge our development partners for providing us with the enhanced level of technical and financial cooperation.  We need an enhanced level of support to tackle key challenges of nutrition ahead, particularly in the cross-cutting areas of the Multi-sectoral Plan, including institutional strengthening, capacity building and strengthening of monitoring and evaluation to track progress.  This support will be critical in ensuring sustained progress towards achieving our goal of substantial improvement in nutrition status and lives of our women and children. There is an opportunity to make substantive and sustained progress in this area with a strengthened global partnership.

Thank You

Dr. Baburam Bhattarai
Prime Minister of Nepal

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