Early this month, when the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched its 2022-2023 Results Report, it admitted that with less than six years to their 2030 target date, the Sustainable Development Goals related to health were basically out of reach. While it is fair to say that Covid-19 threw a spanner in the works, it also occasioned some amount of renewed interest in health, therefore all the blame does not lie with the pandemic. The fact is that wars, famine, and climate-related catastrophes coupled with apathy and sloth on the part of governments mean that the world would likely be no closer to meeting the targets had there been no coronavirus.
Unfortunately, pandemics aside, health is low on the list of priorities for many countries. Security (notably defence), energy and infrastructural development tend to be the most important considerations, notwithstanding the fact that they would all be purposeless without the human resources to defend and provide for, as well as to utilise them. So skewed is the reality that, for example, in most places, funding to build a new hospital would be given precedence over the installation of pipelines to ensure communities have access to potable water and good sanitation. While both of these are infrastructural projects, the latter would, by far, have a much greater positive impact on citizens’ health. However, governments somehow seem to prefer fixing problems than preventing them.
One of the drivers of ill health is the economic instability that spawns escalation in the cost of living propelling the already vulnerable deeper into poverty, the foundation for a host of issues, not least among which is decreased educational attainment. The nexus between poverty and health in general has been explored in hundreds of studies done over the years. The fault lines linking impoverishment and mental health, stress, substance use, and violence, particularly domestic abuse, are very clearly established. More than that, the deprivation responsible for malnutrition also results in health disparities that lower life expectancy. All of the above are detrimental to any nation having a bright future.
What is even worse is the injudiciousness displayed with regard to the facts with which we are entirely familiar. It is because they are cognisant of the relationship between nutrition and education that governments the world over, ours included, have school-feeding programmes. However, the single meal offered is in some instances neither nutritious nor available five days a week during the school year. Even if it were, it would not be enough to undo the untold damage from the lack of food or unhealthy diets.
Vitamin and mineral deficiencies can decrease the discharge of dopamine, a neurotransmitter vital for the learning process, thus inhibiting mental concentration. Healthy diets improve cognitive skills and therefore academic performance, but also children’s attitudes towards learning, and their behaviour in general. These are known facts.
What recent advances in science have also taught us is that the preschool years are even more important. The brains of children from birth to six years old require all of the essential nutrients to form and maintain their structures. Furthermore, their entire bodies also need healthy foods to help protect against deficiency diseases like rickets and anaemia. Poor nutrition early in life can not only lead to lifelong lacklustre academic performances, but long-term health issues like obesity, cardiovascular disease and other chronic non-communicable diseases.
Given this information, the outcry over the rising cost of living should trigger urgent responses among officialdom. No such luck. In all areas of this country, people lament their growing inability to feed their families, or to provide a balanced diet. When prices are high, they forego purchases of fruits and vegetables that are nutrient positive.
Interviewed for this newspaper’s “Cost of Living” feature, one citizen said: “Sometimes when my family and I go to the market, we can’t afford to buy fruits; we have to cut our eyes.” Another bemoaned: “Sometimes I can’t afford to purchase certain food items, I’ll have to make do with what I have.” Yet another said: “Now when you go with $5,000 at the shop, you only get like two items, rice and oil. If someone is working for a day’s pay of $5,000/$3,000 that can’t buy anything much.”
In his New Year’s address to the nation, President Irfaan Ali promised cost-of-living interventions to cushion any spikes in prices in the economy. “We want to put more money into the pockets of people. Our policy making matrix will address this ideal and the idea of putting more money in the pockets of our people. Workers will continue to benefit from increases in their wages and salaries, augmenting the other measures, which we will take to enhance household disposable incomes,” he had said. Those interventions must be arriving on a slow boat; it has been nearly six months.
The inattention to people’s woes now will incur heavy costs in the future. Disease morbidity will ensure that healthcare remains expensive no matter how much money is thrown at it. Education rates will continue with 98% of the population on the flatline or below; not because the issues outlined are insurmountable, but because there is no will to really change anything and avoidance is an easier game to play.
