Media has a crucial role in highlighting nutrition issues in Pakistan: Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta

Press Release

Media has a crucial role in highlighting nutrition issues in Pakistan: Dr. Zulfiqar Bhutta

Islamabad, April 22: Pakistan is facing a silent crisis of malnutrition that is amongst the worst in the world and has not improved for decades. This was stated by speakers at media round table organized by Development Partners for Nutrition and Save the Children. The event was attended by a large number of electronic and print media journalists.

Save the Children’s Arshad Mahmood opened the discussion about the role of media in highlighting nutrition during the pre election period. He emphasized the importance of putting nutrition on the agenda of media in the ongoing pre election debate and in the post election scenario.

UNICEF Pakistan’s Ms Silvia Kaufmann, while sharing facts about the situation of malnutrition on behalf of development partners for nutrition, said that malnutrition can be ended in a generation if government and civil society work together and the issue is recognized and prioritized by all stakeholders. She added that it’s time for action; we should focus and look at nutrition as an investment and entry point to poverty reduction and socio-economic development. She emphasized that political leaders and decision makers must be aware about the situation of nutrition in order to opt for and to prioritize effective policies and programs. She also emphasized for better resource to address root causes of malnutrition.

Professor Dr Zulfiqar Bhutta, Founding Director, Center of Excellence in Women and Child Health, Aga Khan University, shared the overall situation of malnutrition in Pakistan beginning with the concepts of stunting and wasting. The rate of change for both stunting and wasting has been very slow in Pakistan, emphasized Dr. Bhutta. He explained that poverty is not the only reason behind child malnutrition in the country. There is a strong relationship between fertility, disease burden and practices such as hand washing, feeding practices especially exclusive breastfeeding.

Mr. Adnan Rehmat, Executive Director, Intermedia Pakistan and a renowned columnist requested the development sector to take the initiative and start training journalists on health reporting. He said ‘A journalist is just as good as his information; as journalists are not experts but if given the right information, they can surely make a difference’. He also said that someone needs to take up the responsibility to ensure that journalists have access to case studies. There is also a need to use Radio as there are 140 radio stations having access to people at the grassroots level.

Dr Sania Nishtar, Minister for Education & Training (E& T), Science and Technology (S & T) and Information Technology (I.T) and a prominent Public Health Specialist addressed the audience and said that a lot has to be done in the nutrition sector and the responsibility does not lie on the government alone. The media and the journalists need to play their part as well. She also said that there is a lot of data out there which should be shared with the media regularly. ‘These agendas are really close to my heart and I’d like to see them go forward’.

Mr. Desmond Whyms, Senior Health Adviser at the Department for International Development (DFID) thanked all the participants for their active participation in the deliberations and stressed on the importance of nutrition in the country and said that prevalence of political will, can help change this situation.

Ends.