Today (7th of April) marks the World Health Day for 2016 and constituted an opportunity to raise global awareness on Diabetes, the focused theme for this year, and its impact on millions of lives around the globe.

 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), diabetes, is a non-communicable disease (NCD) that affects mostly people in low- and middle-income countries.

We presently live in a world where hundreds of millions suffer from diseases caused by excessive or unbalanced diets. More than half the world’s disease burden can be attributed to hunger, unbalanced energy intake or vitamin and mineral deficiencies – and developing nations are quickly joining the ranks of countries dealing with severe health issues at both ends of the nutritional spectrum.

High energy intake, poor dietary habits and faulty metabolism lead to an entirely different set of problems. Obesity and chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension are quickly becoming a social and economic burden in developing countries. Recent evidence also suggests that susceptibility to these diseases may be linked to undernutrition during pregnancy and early childhood.

While the specific health consequences vary, both the underweight and the overweight share high levels of sickness and disability, shortened life spans and diminished productivity. The result is that developing nations, their resources already stretched to the limit, must now cope increasingly with serious health issues at both ends of the nutritional spectrum.

Malnutrition, in all its forms, including undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity, not only affects people’s health and wellbeing by impacting negatively on human physical and cognitive development, compromising the immune system, increasing susceptibility to communicable and non-communicable diseases, restricting the attainment of human potential and reducing productivity, but also poses a high burden in the form of negative social and economic consequences to individuals, families, communities and States.

Different forms of malnutrition as part of food insecurity co-exist within most countries; while dietary risk affects all socio-economic groups, large inequalities exist in nutritional status, exposure to risk and adequacy of dietary energy and nutrient intake, between and within countries.

However, ensuring food security for all is at the heart of FAO’s mandate, its programmes and activities.  Raising levels of nutrition, securing improvements in the efficiency of the production and distribution of all food and agricultural products, and improving the standards of living and conditions of rural populations constitute the fundamental pillars of FAO’s constitution.

In this endeavour, since its founding, FAO has been acknowledged as a global authoritative body that provides a neutral forum for all nations to negotiate agreements and debate policy on defeating hunger in the world as well as a source of knowledge for strengthening agriculture, forestry and fisheries practices to secure sustainable agricultural and rural development.

FAO’s strategy and vision for nutrition seeks to improve diets and raise levels of nutrition of low-income, resource poor, food insecure, socially excluded and economically marginalized, most nutritionally vulnerable households in gender-sensitive and sustainable ways.

The purpose of the strategy is to reposition and prioritize FAO’s work in nutrition and to reinforce its leadership role in bringing stakeholders together, in generating and communicating knowledge to build political commitment and guide actions, and in strengthening capacities of governments and other implementing partners to act effectively.

According to the information published by the Iranian Diabetes Society, the country is equally confronted by the challenges of diabetes, as approximately 12% of the adult population is affected by and  suffer from different types of this non-communicable disease.

At the country level, FAO is seeking to forge a closer collaboration between key stakeholders to address the challenges. In this endeavor, the Organization pursuing joint programmes with WHO, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Jihad-e Agriculture to promote a concerted effort towards securing enhanced nutrition and healthy diets, strengthened food quality and safety for the nation in line with the recommendations that emanated from the Second International Conference that was held at the Organization’s headquarters in Rome in 2014. I believe that a multidisciplinary approach and inter-sectoral collaboration in this process is essential if we are to “beat” diabetes definitively in Iran. 

(The article is written b Serge R. Nakouzi, the FAO Representative to Iran and to ECO)