Microsoft Co-founder, Bill Gates, has said that improving productivity in agriculture will help in solving the problem of malnutrition in the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Gates, who is a Co-Chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said this at the Nutrivision 2024, a Pan-African Youth Dialogue on Nutrition at Nile University Abuja on Tuesday.
He stressed that making food more available at low cost and using of better seeds will contribute in combating malnutrition which according to him has become one of the things holding back potentials the most.
“If you are malnourished you are at much high risk, if you do get malaria or diarrhoea, you are double at risk of dying of those things. But even if you survive you are not going to do as well as you deserve to do in your education or any of your activities.
“We see this malnutrition stunting which means height for age and part of the way we are going to solve this is by improving agricultural productivity. Malnutrition, part of it, is having access to low cost foods, particularly milk.
“So, making food more available at low cost, using better seeds and understating that even understanding that with the climate change, we can come up with seeds that often contrive with less water or even in cases where you have too much water and be able to still be highly productive,” Gates said.
He noted that a lot of people are undernourished in Sub-Saharan Africa and the rate is not yet going down unfortunately. Gates lamented that the high inflation in Nigeria and other countries is also not helping in the bid to bring down malnutrition, especially in terms of having access to quality food.
According to him, it is actually quite mysterious because many of the kids who get malnourished are having access to enough food, but often the diets are not simply matching and so they are not able to absolve the nutrition.
He further stated that because malnutrition starts very early in life, one of the best ways to fight it is to help mothers even before and during pregnancy. He added that a lot of their interventions are focused on helping mothers throughout pregnancy.
“New Micro nutrient Supplements (MMS) have been added to the ones pregnant women get during prenatal visits. I just heard that three million bottles of MMS will be coming into the country to help reduce two million cases of maternal anaemia and save the lives of 70,000 babies. So, pretty soon mothers will get these vital vitamins,” Gates said.
He expressed his excitement that the Gates foundation is putting more resources into nutrition, but admitted that it is not something really simple to solve which according to him necessitates the need to work with the health and agricultural sector.
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