Thank you very much to the members for having us today.
The Micronutrient Initiative is a Canadian-based development organization focusing on the delivery of micronutrients, which are vitamins and minerals needed in only small quantities, and the delivery of nutrition health programs to the world's most vulnerable populations, particularly women and children.
The Government of Canada has pledged to make maternal and child health central to this year's G-8 meeting, and it is asking G-8 members and other countries to make commitments to saving and improving lives. Canada's leadership in this matter is timely and much needed. We understand that the aim of the Government of Canada's initiative is to generate international commitment to action to address the tragic rates of maternal and child mortality and morbidity that prevail in developing countries. Success in this initiative is essential if the world community is to achieve the millennium development goal of reducing global child and maternal mortality rates by two-thirds and three-quarters respectively by 2015.
The Micronutrient Initiative believes that to achieve these goals, maternal and child health programs must place a strong emphasis on measures that tackle undernutrition. Nutrition has been called the forgotten MDG. Slow progress on the health MDGs is at least partially due to the neglect of nutrition.
The distinguished medical journal, The Lancet, provided recent indisputable evidence of this. Following a careful review of thousands of studies, it reported that maternal and child undernutrition is the direct or indirect cause of an estimated 3.5 million preventable maternal and child deaths annually. It showed that a child's growth trajectory is set for life in the first few years of life, and not having adequate nutrition during this critical time has lifelong consequences on health, productivity, and economic growth.
Finally, The Lancet confirmed that ready availability of nutrition and health interventions, when targeted during the critical window of opportunity in a child's life of minus 9 months to 24 months, reduces child mortality and improves maternal health. Additional evidence shows that improving nutrition during this window of opportunity provides cognitive development and school performance, reduces school dropouts, and promotes national economic productivity.
The 2008 Copenhagen consensus summarized the conclusions of a panel of leading economists, including five Nobel laureates, on the top ten investments that could be made in development. Five of these were nutrition-related. Micronutrients were at the very top of the list.
Undernutrition is one of the most serious health problems in the world, but rapidly applicable solutions can provide the highest returns on investments in development. However, this issue remains terribly neglected in international development efforts. Indeed, recent assessments of official development assistance provided by OECD countries showed that there was strong growth in investments in health in general, but weakness and stagnation of investment levels in nutrition. For the Canadian government, this initiative, in light of the approaching G8 summit, is an opportunity to remedy this shortcoming and to take advantage of our cutting-edge donor history in this area.
When UN member states made their commitment to children in 1990 at the World Summit for Children, a historic summit, Canada translated its leadership as co-chair of the event into pragmatic and concrete action, in particular in the area of nutrition, through the creation of the Micronutrient Initiative. For close to 20 years, our country has been supporting the Micronutrient Initiative's efforts to finance innovative work and encourage new international partners to participate in improving child health. This has meant that Canada has been recognized worldwide for its central role in the success of programs to supplement vitamin A, and for its role in the significant reductions in child mortality this supplementation has brought.
Yet Canada, characteristically, rarely takes the credit. Even in remote rural health posts in developing countries, one of the few things you can usually find on the shelf is a small Canadian flag. That flag is on a bottle containing life- and sight-saving vitamin A made in Canada. I would very much like you to pass on our thanks to all your constituents for making that possible.
To deliver its programs, the Micronutrient Initiative does not go it alone but relies on being able to coordinate and work effectively with other health programs. This ensures that essential drugs and other services, for children and for women, are delivered as a package. We rely on trained front-line community health workers to be able to take that essential package of health services so that they are all within reach of all the communities those front-line health service workers serve.
One good example is the treatment of diarrhea. Diarrheal disease remains one of the major killers of children. Nearly one in five children under the age of five dies needlessly as a result of dehydration, weakened immunity, or malnutrition associated with diarrhea. Treating diarrhea with zinc can help reduce that risk. The Micronutrient Initiative is calling for a major new investment in zinc, but also for all measures needed to help both treat and prevent diarrheal disease. This means providing not only a micronutrient, in this case 20¢ worth of simple zinc supplements to help children get better faster, but also oral rehydration to make sure the children don't get too dehydrated, and for adequate investment in areas such as the promotion of exclusive breastfeeding, access to clean water and sanitation, the use of soap in the household, and up-to-date measles vaccinations and vitamin A supplementation.
Another good example is antenatal care. A mother needs extra iron during pregnancy, as well as folate to help prevent some types of birth defects. Significant investment needs to be pledged not only to provide iron and folic acid supplements but also to make sure that each pregnant mother has access to trained front-line health workers who can provide those supplements, along with counselling, screening for complications, and other services. Those mothers also need access to skilled attendance at the birth from someone who knows what to do, such as delaying cord clamping so that the new baby gets the iron they need from the mother.
We are hopeful that the funding commitments made at the upcoming G-8 summit will represent a truly significant step towards realizing the MDGs for child survival and maternal health. The world can achieve them if it puts its mind to it, and Canada can show the way.