Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Cost?

Action against malnutrition is needed more than ever. An additional US$10.3 billion a year is required from national and international public resources to successfully attack undernutrition worldwide. This would benefit more than 360 million children in the 36 countries with the highest burden of undernutrition—home to 90 percent of the stunted children globally. Since early childhood offers a special window of opportunity to improve nutrition, the bulk of the investment needs to be targeted between pre-pregnancy until two years of age.

'Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Cost?' notes that investment will yield high returns through thriving children, healthier families, and more productive workers. This investment is essential to make progress on the nutrition and child mortality Millennium Development Goals and to protect critical human capital in developing economies. The human and financial costs of further neglect will be high.

This call for greater investment in nutrition comes at a time when global efforts to strengthen health systems provide a unique opportunity to scale up integrated packages of health and nutrition interventions with common delivery platforms, thereby reducing costs.

'Scaling Up Nutrition: What Will It Cost?' has benefited from the expertise of many international agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and research institutions. This book will be of interest to policy makers, public health officials, nutritionists, government officials, and all those interested in improving child nutrition and health outcomes.