Nutrition is too important to be treated as a matter that concerns only the health sector. It affects children, women, families and, ultimately, the country’s human development.
The call by the Vice President, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, for Ghana to urgently scale up investment in nutrition should, therefore, receive serious attention.
The challenge is clear. Ghana continues to face nutrition-related problems, including anaemia among women and adolescent girls, poor diet quality and diversity, and inadequate breastfeeding during the first six months of life.
These challenges have consequences that can extend well beyond childhood.
As the Vice President pointed out, poor nutrition during childhood can undermine physical growth, learning and future opportunities.
For girls, the effects can extend into adulthood and pregnancy, putting the lives of both mothers and children at risk.
These are not challenges that can be addressed by the health sector alone.
Nutrition is influenced by food production, household income, school meals, access to information and health services.
That makes a coordinated response involving health, education, agriculture, social protection and local government particularly important.
There are already interventions on which Ghana can build. Adolescent nutrition programmes, school feeding, maternal and child health services and social protection programmes form part of the country’s response.
Efforts are also being made to ensure that more children suffering from wasting receive treatment, while funds have been committed to essential nutrition commodities, multiple micronutrient supplements and equipment for assessing and monitoring nutritional status.
The school feeding programme, which currently reaches more than 4.5 million children, is another important component.
However, reaching more children cannot be the only measure of success. The nutritional quality of the food served must receive equal attention.
The emphasis on improved nutritional standards, caterer training and monitoring is therefore significant.
The Feed Ghana programme also provides an opportunity to increase domestic food production, improve food security and make nutritious food more available. Similarly, the Free Primary Health Care Initiative offers an avenue for strengthening nutrition services through prevention, maternal and child healthcare, immunisation, home visits and public education.
What is required now is continuity and adequate financing. Nutrition interventions cannot achieve their full potential if they are treated as short-term activities.
The Vice-President’s call for stronger domestic financing and international partnerships for long-term nutrition systems is therefore worth considering within the broader development agenda.
The responsibility is shared. Government agencies, development partners, scientists, civil society, businesses and communities all have roles to play.
Better coordination and sustained investment can help ensure that existing programmes work together rather than operate in isolation.
The objective should be straightforward, to create conditions in which children can grow, learn and develop without being held back by preventable nutritional deficiencies, and in which women receive the nutritional support they need.
The message from the Vice President’s address is clear, investment in nutrition is not simply an investment in food or healthcare.
It is an investment in people and in Ghana’s future.
The task now is to sustain the commitment, strengthen existing interventions and ensure that resources devoted to nutrition produce lasting benefits.
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