Director General Sindh Food Authority Agha Fakhar Hussain has said that Children in Pakistan specially in Sindh province are confronted with a triple burden of wasting, stunting and overweight and obesity.
The country must therefore move away from vertical programming of malnutrition towards the coordinated management children who are not growing well.
This he said as a key speaker in a workshop “ Global Action Plan on Children Wasting Framework “ at a local hotel in Islamabad.
He added, ‘ In Pakistan, four out of ten children under five years of age are stunted while 17.7% suffer from wasting.
The double burden of malnutrition is becoming increasingly apparent, with almost one in three children un-derweight (28.9%) alongside a high prevalence of overweight (9.5%) in the same age group ‘. DG SFA Agha FakharHussain said that in this regard SFA is also working on Fortification programmes especially on Flour oil and salt fortification programs calo-ries Count initiative, and school going kids’ awareness programmes.
He assured that we would do all our efforts to make the programme successful in Sindh. On this occa-sion Dr. KhawajaMasuood Ahmed, National Coordinator, Nutrition & National Forti-fication Alliance, Dr. Baseer Khan Achakzai DG Health, Dr. Saba Shuja, ECD Man-ager, UNICEF Pakistan and others also spoke.
