Investing In Women’s Nutrition For Healthy, Smart and More Sustainable Societies Side Event

The event highlighted that half a billion women suffer from anaemia therefore, a sick woman cannot be an empowered woman and that donors and governments need to prioritise this issue.

UNICEF Chief of Nutrition Dr. Werner Schultink said that the impact of climate change on women and that countries like Zambia are already experiencing drought and the impact of Elnino therefore, there’s need for better policies to mitigate.

The discussion highlighted that a lot of information available discourages women from breast feeding. And that 30 per cent of women are anaemic, give birth to children with brain defects and stunted growth.

The First Lady Mrs Esther Lungu called for increased investment in nutrition stating that nutrition has huge dividends particularly around empowering women and girls through improvement of their health and helping girls to learn better in school. She said increased resources to nutrition can lift over hundred and fifty million people out of poverty.

Mrs Lungu said, “Mental retardation due to malnutrition has adverse effects on children therefore, collaboration with partners should be a priority because children as we say in Zambia are the future leaders, if we don’t take care of our children it means we are doing an injustice to the future”.

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