The Forum at the 2024 World Health Summit to Tackle Malnutrition

Ahead of the 2025 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Paris, the Paris Peace Forum organized a panel on nutrition at the 2024 World Health Summit on October 14th October 9 AM (CEST). 

Date: 14 October 2024, 09:00-10:30 CEST
Format: Live panel discussion 

Malnutrition is a major public health problem affecting a significant proportion of the world's population (149.2 million children under five are stunted and 45.4 million are emaciated, etc.). As such, the effects of malnutrition concern various aspects of the global governance spectrum (health, development, food systems, etc.), both in the Global South and in the Global North, since it also encompasses obesity (39% of people over 18 were overweight in 2016, and 13% were obese). 

Following on from the summits in London in 2012 and Tokyo in 2021, the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit will take place in Paris in 2025, and will be a major event given the scale of the issue. It represents a unique opportunity to break down silos and address the topic beyond the nutrition community, in order to identify and prioritize essential solutions and bring them to scale. This session provided an opportunity to discuss the political and financial objectives of the summit, just a few months before it takes place. 

Our diverse panel of experts shared valuable strategies to elevate nutrition within global health initiatives.  Some key takeaways: 

• Brieuc Pont (MFA) underlined the importance of ensuring N4G’s legacy and continuity through the creation of a troika involving Japan, France, and the US, while emphasizing nutrition as a high-return investment in development.  

• Justin Vaïsse (Paris Peace Forum) presented the mandate that was given by the French MFA to the Paris Peace Forum to support the N4G Summit Secretariat by convening two working groups: the Independent Expert Panel on Nutrition as well as the N4G Private Sector Working Group, with our partners ATNI and GAIN.  

• Afshan Khan (SUN Movement) emphasized the importance of nationally led and driven nutrition interventions, with a focus on measurable, monitorable and accountable global targets, as well as called for better articulation of nutrition costs in health interventions, combining nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions.  

• Shawn Baker (Helen Keller Intl) stressed the substantial nutrition gap in the health sector and outlined five key areas for improvement: strong policy commitments, enhanced financial support, empowered community health workers, making nutrition at the core of the primary healthcare services and addressing the issue of stock-outs of life-saving nutrition commodities.  

• Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao (GAVI) highlighted the effectiveness of integrating nutrition into health programs, citing the "nutri-vax" interventions as a promising approach to improve both nutrition outcomes and vaccine efficiency.  

• Greg Garrett (ATNI) explained the role of the private sector in nutrition, emphasizing the need for responsible investing in food companies and the implementation of metrics for nutrition aiming to transform the market to be more nutrition focused.