By Iyemah David
The West Africa Health Organisation (WAHO) has called on member states to finance nutrition to attain Sustainable Development Goal 2 by 2030 in the region.
Director-General of WAHO, Dr Melchior Athanase, said this in Abuja at the ECOWAS Nutrition forum, with the theme, ‘Leveraging Sustainable Financing for Multisectoral Approaches: Accelerate Universal Access to Nutritious, Safe, Affordable and Sustainable Diets.’
The ECOWAS Nutrition Forum is a regional platform that brings together major stakeholders in nutrition to review policies, practices and progress in the reduction of malnutrition and diet-related diseases in the sub-region.
The forum is also meant to assemble and share relevant knowledge on access to nutrition, safe, affordable, and sustainable diets, including essential services in the post-COVID-19 era across the ECOWAS region.
It is also meant to speed up progress for nutrition impact.
Dr Athanase said that the 2030 agenda of SDGs obliged the region to make more effort for the financing of nutrition, which must be one of the indisputable priorities of all member states.
He said this justifies the choice of the theme of this forum, which is ‘Leveraging sustainable financing for multi-sectoral approaches: accelerating universal access to nutritious, safe, affordable and sustainable diets.’
Dr Athanase said indeed, the present framework of exchanges that the forum offers the region would allow it to free the genius creators for relevant analysis in the depths of the limits of good nutrition, which would be in perfect harmony with the pragmatic proposals expected on innovative and original financing mechanisms.
“This theme will, therefore, be an opportunity to examine the practices of collaborations with innovative and functional multi-sector approaches. This will ultimately lead to a synergy of actions for lasting effects that should lead to a significant impact on the financing of nutritional interventions,” he said.
According to him, the national nutrition focal points and the Technical and Financial Partners took their time, to carry out a critical and constructive assessment, to admit elements of evaluation and progress made and identified country by country in the implementation of nutrition programmes, as well as the review of the recommendations of previous evaluations.
He said that discussions would also focus on Public Private Partnership approaches aimed at improving the availability and access sustainably, to diversify foods, in an approach favouring the organic trend with an arduous richness in macro and micronutrients.
Dr Athanase further said that the current context of security, humanitarian, socio-economic and even climatic crises in the region added to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges the region and challenges the subconscious.
“It is therefore very imperative to format an effective and efficient mechanism for sharing experiences.
“In this context, national investments are essential to enable countries to take ownership of the programmes and ensure their sustainability.
“We will also need a strong coordination of orientation and prioritization of investments for food and nutritional security with equity and justice towards our populations, for the establishment of a real ECOWAS of the peoples,” he said.
Dr. Athanase noted that indeed, the right to adequate nutrition is one of the basic human rights recognised by the UN, which ECOWAS respects in the fight against malnutrition in all its forms.
The ECOWAS Nutrition Forum is a regional platform that brings together key nutrition stakeholders biennially, to discuss nutrition policies and practices, progress in reducing malnutrition and diet-related diseases and innovative practices in the region.
About 250 nutrition experts from across the region are participating in the meeting, whose main objective is to strengthen multi-sectoral collaboration to improve financing and Universal Health Coverage for nutrition.
According to the organisers, the forum will be an opportunity to examine innovative multi-sectoral collaboration practices that work best in terms of the synergy of action and sustainable financing of nutrition interventions.
