A new public-private partnership, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), has been launched to help create cost-effective food fortification programmes in a bid to improve health, cognitive development and productivity in developing nations.
GAIN will support developing countries in the implementation of locally developed food fortification programmes designed to help eliminate the devastating effects of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The alliance is composed of diverse groups, including foundations, the UN, developing country governments, private sector companies, NGOs and academic institutions.
GAIN will control more than $20-25 million of funds in the first year, with pledges totalling $70 million already made for the next five years. Some $50 million of this comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charitable trust set up by the founder of Microsoft, while a further $8 million will come from USAID, C$5.5 million from the Micronutrient Initiative and C$500,000 from the Canadian International Development Agency.
"More than two billion people - mostly women and children - still suffer from micronutrient deficiencies," said Anne Peterson, assistant administrator, USAID Bureau for Global Health. "Yet experience proves that well-designed food fortification programmes can not only dramatically improve health, they can reduce stifling national healthcare costs and boost intellectual potential and domestic productivity."
Micronutrient deficiencies - in particular, deficiencies in vitamin A, iron, folic acid and iodine - cause a wide range of serious health problems including birth defects, maternal death, childhood mortality, impaired physical and mental growth, blindness, anaemia and increased susceptibility to infections.
"Public-private partnerships are essential for solving the health, hygiene and nutrition issues of children worldwide," said John Pepper, chairman of Procter & Gamble, one of several major private companies involved in the scheme. "The GAIN initiative is a creative, new approach toward solving the global micronutrient malnutrition problem, and P&G is aligned with GAIN's mission and goals."
Sally Stansfield, acting director of vaccines and infectious diseases at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said: "Food fortification is a cost-effective health intervention that works. Correcting vitamin A and iron deficiencies alone can help reduce maternal deaths by 20 per cent, decrease child mortality by at least 23 per cent and increase work capacity by up to 15 per cent."Stansfield also stressed that food fortification was "neither new, nor revolutionary. In fact, the developed world has been reaping its health benefits for years through, for example, iodised salt and milk enriched with vitamins A and D. GAIN is a sign of the growing global movement determined to give all children the best possible start in life."
Welcome though the creation of the GAIN initiative is, it has not been entirely endorsed by everyone. One US-based lobby group, Infact, has called for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to use its leverage to prevent the giant tobacco and food group Philip Morris from taking part in the scheme.
Infact claims that Philip Morris has used Kraft, its food arm which is part of the GAIN alliance, to undermine the World Health Organisation's global treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). "Kraft is integral to Philip Morris's current effort to sanitise its public image," the NGO claimed in a vitriolic press release. These efforts include a 1712 per cent increase in spending on corporate image advertising from 1998-2000, highlighting the tobacco giant's charitable giving and ownership of Kraft.
"By entering into a partnership with Kraft Foods through the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, the Gates Foundation may be unknowingly aiding Philip Morris's attempts to undermine the world's first public health treaty. It would be tragic if GAIN were to help serve Philip Morris's expansion of tobacco addiction, disease and death in economically poor countries," said Infact campaign director Kelle Louaillier.
"Philip Morris depends on Kraft for political cover, and to foster good will that may silence potential critics, as it drives a global tobacco epidemic that claims four million lives a year. Philip Morris's own internal corporate documents provide insight into how Kraft is complicit with the parent corporation's tobacco agenda, including efforts to derail regulation like the FCTC," Louaillier claimed.