| | |

Home / Employment / Contact / Search / Français / Español

| | |

| | |

Press Centre

Press Centre Home

Press Releases 1996-2003

UNICEF in the News

Calendar

Executive Speeches

Country Stats

For Broadcasters

Press Centre

Press Release

Prime Minister Vajpayee Launches New Initiative To Vaccinate Children Against Hepatitis B

Links

•UNICEF's GAVI pages

• The Vaccine Fund

ROME, 11 June 2002 - UNICEF said today that global success in lowering child malnutrition could only be achieved through comprehensive action on numerous fronts - including many not directly related to food.

Speaking today at the World Food Summit: Five Years Later, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Kul C. Gautam said that child malnutrition must be fought through measures that include enhancing household food security, improving basic health care, and ensuring safe water and decent sanitation for hundreds of millions of people who are still without these basic services.

"The world produces enough food to feed every man, woman and child on earth. Hunger and malnutrition are therefore not due to lack of food alone, but are also the consequences of poverty, inequality and misplaced priorities," Gautam said. He said efforts to reduce global malnutrition must start with children, on whom poor nutrition has the most damaging and lasting effects.

Gautam stressed that child malnutrition is best addressed by taking a holistic, life-cycle approach, ensuring that all children are born healthy and are properly cared for in their earliest years, and that primary health care and basic education are provided in all communities.

UNICEF said that significant gains could be made in human potential by tapping the power of simple micronutrients such as iodine, vitamin A and iron. These key micronutrients are necessary for cognitive development, better school performance, and work productivity.

While the past decade has seen progress toward universal salt iodization to reduce iodine deficiency and the distribution of supplements to reduce vitamin A deficiency in young children, reducing the dangerous effects of iron deficiency anaemia in women and children has lagged far behind. Iron deficiency anaemia is the single most prevalent cause of micronutrient malnutrition in the world, affecting more than two billion people.

UNICEF also promotes integrated support to breastfeeding, investing in girls, women and young people to strengthen their roles as providers of nutrition security, and stepping up efforts to address the critical nutritional needs of communities devastated by HIV/AIDS, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, which faces the triple burden of chronic food insecurity, a weakened labour force, and the increased nutritional needs created by the pandemic.

For further information, contact:

Alfred Ironside, UNICEF Media, New York, ++ 212) 326-7261

Donata Lodi, Italian Committee for UNICEF: (39) 06- 4789287

The Vaccine Fund was established to address the need for new and underused vaccines in the world's poorest countries - those with per capita GNP below $1,000. The Fund provides resources for immunisation services as well as for purchasing new and under-used vaccines against diseases such as hepatitis B, yellow fever and haemophilus influenza B (hib). The Vaccine Fund mobilises resources to serve the mission of GAVI.

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) is a coalition of organisations whose mission is to reduce the widening disparities in vaccine access between industrialised and developing countries, and increase global immunisation coverage. The GAVI partners include: national governments, the Children's Vaccine Program at PATH, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA), research and public health institutions, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, UNICEF, the World Bank Group and the World Health Organization (WHO).

*******

For further information please contact:

In India

Geeta Athreya, UNICEF, Tel : 4690401, e-mail : [email-masked]

Savita Varde-Naqvi, UNICEF,Tel : 4690401, e-mail : [email-masked]

Madhu Krishna, PATH, Tel : 4635745, e-mail : [email-masked]

In Geneva:

Lisa Jacobs, GAVI Secretariat, +41 22 909 5042, [email-masked]

In New York:
Heidi Larson, Tel: +1 646 207 5179, [email-masked]

Mohammad Jalloh, +1 212 326 7516, [email-masked]