SOME ACTIONABLE SOLUTIONS

I HAVE spent more than two decades in rooms where nutrition is discussed in percentages — 40.2 per cent stunted, 17.7pc wasted, 53.7pc anaemic, and so on. Numbers are what shape policies. But every so often they give way to a face. I remember a mother in a flood relief camp in Sindh, cradling a child who, at 14 months, looked half his age. She wanted to know why, in a country that exports rice and wheat, her son could not get enough to eat. I did not have a good answer then, and three years later, I still do not have one. Yet, that painful question is also the beginning of an answer. It is so because we have not yet chosen to make nutrition the priority it must be. The good news is that we know exactly what to do, and our neighbours have shown us that it works.

Globally, child stunting has fallen substantially since 1990, built on vaccination, clean water, girls’ education and targeted nutrition programmes. Yet, progress has plateaued and remains dangerously uneven. The latest Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank, released in 2025, put 150.2 million children aged under five (