Dagi Kimani
26 October 2008
Nairobi — The World Food Programme will soon start using an innovative micronutrients supplement to support the diet of people facing food shortages in Kenya.
The supplement, known as MixMe, will be used to reinforce food at home as opposed to the conventional fortification, such as iodine in salt, which is done at the industrial level.
Satchets of MixMe, which contains the key micronutrients that food-stressed people often do not get, will be distributed to vulnerable communities.
Other than Kenya, MixMe supplements will be used in Nepal and Bangladesh, covering a total of 250,000 people. A global rollout will reach millions more, according to the WFP.
The MixMe supplement was developed by the WFP and the Netherlands-based DSM Nutritional Products.
According to the WFP, do-it-yourself food fortification satchets such as MixMe could go a long way in reversing global malnutrition.
In addition to the almost one billion people who are openly hungry, the organisation says, there are close to another one billion people in the world who seem not to suffer from hunger, but are in fact savaged by deficiencies in micronutrients (the so-called "hidden hunger.")
These people, the agency says, appear to have enough to eat but often eat mainly carbohydrate-rich foods such as rice or maize, which do not provide the essential vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) needed for good health. This makes them vulnerable to nutrition-related disease, such as anaemia and blindness.
The most vulnerable to these conditions are children up to the age of five and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Lack of micronutrients for these can have devastating consequences, causing the death of many women during or shortly after childbirth, irreversible mental and physical impairment to their offspring, and high child mortality due to communicable diseases.
The WFP estimates that over 1.1 million child deaths occur per year due to deficiencies in vitamin A and zinc. A lack of vitamin A weakens the immune system and can cause blindness, while zinc deficiency contributes to stunted growth and weakened immunity in young children.
According to the WFP, the development of the MixMe satchets is an example of the kind of partnerships with the private sector that can help the developing world overcome a wide range of challenges, from poverty to disease.
"This is a concrete example of how a UN agency can work with the private sector to jointly develop an innovative product," said Martin Bloem, WFP's chief of nutrition in a statement. "For just 2.5 US cents per child per a day, we can now save countless children's lives by giving them essential vitamins and minerals."
Supplements like MixMe were particularly important for children, since recent evidence has shown that micronutrient deficiency in the first 24 months of life can have irreversible effects on intellectual and physical development, Mr Bloem added.
Among the challenges faced by DSM and WFP in developing MixMe was producing a stable and tasteless powder and appropriate packaging to protect the contents from the harsh climatic conditions in many developing countries.
A second challenge was to find a suitable packaging facility that could handle the high volumes involved, and a third was to understand and comply with the approval processes of individual governments.
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