Kuala Lumpur, 30 November 2018 – The findings from the Global Nutrition Report 2018 (https://globalnutritionreport.org) released yesterday should be shocking not only to the government but also to the Malaysian people. It should serve as a wake-up call out of complacency to move beyond recommendations to bold policy action which acknowledges and responds aggressively to this dire state of health.

Commenting on the report, Galen Centre Chief Executive, Azrul Mohd Khalib said “Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have documented reports of adults and children suffering from the double burden of malnutrition, where incidences of overweight and obesity, co-exist with the consequences of undernutrition such as stunting. However, this is the first instance where Malaysia has been identified as having an additional burden of malnutrition, namely micronutrient deficiency resulting in rising prevalence of anaemia, particularly among women.”

“Malaysia’s state of malnutrition appears to be so bad as to be clustered with 41 countries which include Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Egypt, Haiti, Iraq and Libya. The common feature for most of these countries including emerging from armed conflict, struggling with extreme poverty, dealing with the aftermath of humanitarian disasters or failed states. We are an upper middle income country, with six decades of relative peace and stability, democracy and economic progress. We are the only country in Southeast Asia listed as suffering from this triple burden. How did we get here?”

“Increases in overall malnutrition prevalence are driven by a range of interlinked and often societal factors, including widening income disparity, urbanisation, rising cost of living, shifting lifestyles and genetic factors. The costs in dealing with the consequences of the double burden of malnutrition which include diabetes, kidney and cardiovascular diseases, and cancer already make up more than 15 percent of current healthcare spending, and up to 0.8% of GDP. It costs us between RM4.26 billion and RM8.53 billion annually.”

“Despite the fact that increasing consumption of healthy food is the most effective approach to addressing malnutrition, such options are becoming increasingly unaffordable and out of reach of lower income households, ” Azrul emphasised. “Meanwhile, their food bills continue to increase with overall household incomes unable to keep up with the rising cost of living.”

“It is more realistic to nudge or encourage people to eat a balanced and healthy diet through investments in health promotion activities. These investments have been shown to be strategies which work, both in Malaysia and other countries. But have we invested enough in these programmes? Over the past five years, we have actually seen decreasing allocations in the national budget.”

“Industry, government and healthcare stakeholders need to actively collaborate to develop foods that are lower in obesogenic ingredients and higher in nutritional value. Innovation to produce low-fat and low-sugar variants of products, and to find new ways of reducing obesogenic ingredients must be supported. Such public-private collaborations already have a strong track record in tackling under-nutrition in many countries.”

“We need to look beyond what we are currently doing, because what we have been doing has only gotten us more malnutrition. It cannot be business as usual. But what we really need are carefully tailored malnutrition prevention strategies, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. We need smarter and bold policies and more targeted interventions. There are no short-cuts as this requires out of the box thinking.”

 

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