Drop of Life

A person can live without food for three weeks, but only three days without water.

Water is vital to the metabolic process, aiding in the digestion, absorption, and transportation of nutrients in the body. The recommended daily water intake is eight
glasses of water or about two liters. This, however, is just the minimum. Depending on the activity, location, and temperature in the area, a person may actually need more than that.

Unfortunately, water scarcity affects four in ten people and the World Health Organization predicts that the number of affected people may rise given the growing global population. While much of the earth is surrounded with water, only three percent are considered freshwater; the rest are too saline for human consumption.

Agricultural demand for water
There are varied factors for the depletion of water sources, including climate change and environmental degradation, but a major culprit was agriculture. With about 70 percent of the world’s water supply consumed by the agriculture sector, it is easy to see why. In the Asia-Pacific region alone, 81.3 percent of freshwater is utilized for agricultural purposes.

While potable drinking water is a key element in nutrition, the paradox is that huge amount of it is required by the agricultural industry to produce food items. Increased agricultural output has been at the forefront of the global fi ght against food insecurity. As the demand for food rises, so is the demand for water needed to
produce these items. While the daily water requirement for each individual is just about two to four liters, the amount of water needed to produce a person’s daily food
requirement ranges from 2,000 to 5,000 liters.

The solution to this problem is not to limit agricultural output, but rather the adoption of sustainable farming practices, as well as a change in food consumption pattern.

When it comes to food consumption pattern, there is a global shift to a meat-based diet, which means more water is needed to produce meat product. As a comparison, producing a kilo of wheat requires about 1000 liters of water. A kilo of meat, on the other hand, requires fi ve to ten times more water to produce.

The next conflict point?
In Tajikistan, people in the town of Taboshar are leaving the community due to acute water shortage, with the local water agency hardly able to meet even just 15 percent of the town’s water needs.

There are two confl icting views on whether water may be the next fl ash points for geo-political confl icts. The US Central Intelligence Agency is but one of the groups
predicting that this might very well be the case; after all, the UNESCO said that one-third of 262 international river basins are shared by two or more countries.

In the Middle East, five countries are sharing the Jordan River basin: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In 2001, tension erupted between Lebanon and Israel when the former attempted to build a pipeline on the Wassani River, which contributes 150 cubic meter of water to the Jordan River. Only the timely intervention of the international community prevented the tension from escalating.

Although there is no major war fought over the control of a water source, there have been periodic clashes, which tend to be localized. In 2000, Chinese police and farmers in Shandong province clashed over the planned diversion of irrigation water to cities and industries.

The other view is more circumspect; water is so vital that nations would benefit more from cooperation in the management of a water source, rather than fi ghting a war for its absolute control.

Prof. Asit Bikwas, a 2006 Stockholm Water Prize awardee, argued that the main issue is not really water scarcity but “bad water management.” He is not alone in this assessment. In the book “Water, a shared responsibility,” the UNESCO – World Water Assessment Programme, acknowledges that “the problem we face today is largely one of governance: equitably sharing this water while ensuring the sustainability of natural ecosystems. At this point in time, we have not yet achieved this balance.”

Addressing the threat of a global water shortage does provide a glimmer of hope, with countries willing to sit down and come up with a compromise on how to better
share a water source. However, it also highlights once more the vulnerability of the poor.

Indeed, when it comes to water allocation, the poor, as always, are left holding an empty jerry can.


Source: Health Alert Asia Pacific, Issue 13, 2008

The pangs of hidden hunger

Micronutrients defi ciency is another indicator of poor nutritional status, and is one that cuts across economic class. Iodine defi ciency, for instance, is a continuing problem even in the affl uent European continent. A 2004 estimate showed that 20 percent of the global population at risk of iodine defi ciency reside in the region.

According to Unicef, for every four persons in the planet, one is suffering from micronutrients defi ciency. The health impacts of micronutrients defi ciency are varied and can be quite staggering: blindness, mental retardation, and even death, particularly for anemic pregnant women.

Iron deficiency
The World Health Organization characterized iron deficiency as “the most common and widespread nutritional disorder in the world.” Establishing the exact magnitude of the problem is hard, but since iron defi ciency is closely tied to anemia, the global prevalence of iron deficiency anemia (IDA) is used as a proxy indicator. IDA is a key indicator of a country’s maternal and child health, and its prevalence refl ects socio-economic disparity: in developing countries, 52 percent of pregnant women are affected with IDA, while the fi gure is down to 23 percent of pregnant women in developed countries.

While the general population is at risk, a new study published at the Pediatrics Journal showed that overweight children are more than twice as likely to have iron deficiency than children with normal body weight. Iodine deficiency A 1994 study showed that there was a drop of up to 13.5 points in the intelligent quotient of populations living in areas with severe iodine defi ciency, as compared to the
population of non-iodine defi cient areas.

The land-locked region of Central Asia is particularly vulnerable to iodine defi ciency due to its mountainous terrain. UNICEF nutrition specialist Arnold Timmer
attributes the depletion of iodine in the region’s soil to erosion and rainfall. The collapse of the Soviet Union, which used to supply the region with iodized salt, added to the problem.

A 2004 study in Uzbekistan showed that prevalence of goiter – an indicator of iodine defi ciency – was 49.6 percent for children and 41.6 percent for adults. Kazakhstan, meanwhile, had a goiter prevalence of 56.5 percent.

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD)
An estimated 21 percent of children worldwide are Vitamin A-defi cient, with the highest concentration located in Asia and Africa. On top of causing blindness, VAD also increases a child’s susceptibility to malaria and diarrhea. Food fortification and breastfeeding The international community is responding to the problem with the adoption of two key strategies: the promotion of breastfeeding and food fortification. Breast milk contains all the essential nutrients needed for a baby’s full development. However, there is still a low adoption of exclusive breastfeeding particularly in poor regions.

With regards to food fortification, it is undeniably a costeffective way of combating micronutrients defi ciency. The Central Asian region’s adoption of salt iodization program has effectively reduced, if not totally eliminated the prevalence of iodine deficiency. Food fortification is indeed effi cient, but policymakers must not make this the major cornerstone of their micronutrients program. Food manufacturers have jumped in on the fortifi cation bandwagon, with the market for fortified foods expected to grow by an average of 10.1 percent between 2005 and 2012. While some of these manufacturers are really driven by a sense of responsibility, governments must still exercise some caution.

The Philippines, for instance, has a Sangkap Pinoy program where food fortifi ed with micronutrients are given a seal. But here lies the problem: some of the products
bearing the Sangkap Pinoy seal are junk foods. Another thing to be considered is economics. Even if fortifi ed foods are readily available, do the people have the means to buy these items?

Sources:
Eliminating Iodine Deficiency in Central Eastern Europe,Commonwealth Independent States and the Baltics by Arnold Timmer. http://www.iccidd.org/media/IDD%20Newsletter/1991-2006/nov2004.htm#g

Iodine deficiency in Europe: a continuing problem. Published by the WHO and UNICEF. http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/VMNIS_Iodine_defi ciency_in_Europe.pdf

Assessment of Iodine deficiency disorders and monitoring their elimination: A guide to program managers, third edition. Published by the WHO, UNICEF and ICCIDD. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9789241595827_eng.pdf

http://www.who.int/rhl/pregnancy_childbirth/medical/anaemia/cfcom/en/

http://www.nutraingredients.com/Industry/Vitamin-enrichedfoods-growing-faster-in-SE-Asia-than-Europe8

Obesity in the Asia-Pacific Region

With much of the focus resting on under-nutrition and micronutrients defi ciency, it is easy to dismiss obesity as nothing but a disease peculiar to affl uent nations. However, experts warned that obesity is reaching an epidemic proportion, and should thus be treated as a valid health concern.

Consider these statistics: in 2005, 1.6 billion adults over the age of 15 are overweight and at least 400 million of this number is obese. By 2015, the World Health Organization calculates the number of overweight adults to increase to 2.3 billion, with 700 million of them clinically obese. Each year at least 2.6 million people die from health complications resulting from all the excessive weight.

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Nutrition in Asia and the Pacific: An Ugly Portrait

Food and nutrition are human rights. International caucuses such as the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child enshrine these and thus deem governments as duty-bound in ensuring that the right to food and nutrition, as part of the overall well-being of a person, is achieved by all of its citizens.

Much as food and nutrition are regarded as basic human rights, the problem of malnutrition persists in many Asian countries. In fact, the concentration of malnutrition in Asia is greatest compared to anywhere else in the world.
The Asian Development Bank reports that one in three preschool children is stunted,
rising to one out of every two children in the countries of South Asia such as India,
Bangladesh, and Nepal.

The most painful subject with regard to under nutrition is the human cost. In 1999 alone, an estimated 2.8 million child deaths in nine low-income Asian countries, or 51 percent of child deaths were associated with malnutrition. (The countries included are Bangladesh, Cambodia, PRC, India, Lao PDR, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam).

Different economic, political, and cultural characteristics in the region portray different faces of malnutrition. In many countries of the Asia-Pacifi c Region, under
nutrition is the most common. In some areas however, there are also incidences of over nutrition.

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