Some actionable solutions

For more than two decades, nutrition discussions have revolved around percentages: 40.2 percent stunted, 17.7 percent wasted, 53.7 percent anaemic. Those numbers shape policy, but sometimes they give way to a face.

The article recalls a mother in a flood relief camp in Sindh holding a 14-month-old child who looked half his age. She asked why, in a country that exports rice and wheat, her son could not get enough to eat. The writer says there was no good answer then, and there still is not one three years later.

Yet that painful question also points toward an answer. The article argues that Pakistan has not chosen to make nutrition the priority it needs to be. It also says the country knows what to do, and that neighbouring countries have shown such measures can work.

Worldwide, child stunting has fallen substantially since 1990 through a combination of vaccination, clean water, girls’ education and targeted nutrition programmes. But progress has now plateaued and remains dangerously uneven.

The article’s central argument is direct: Pakistan’s challenge is not a lack of knowledge about solutions, but the failure to give nutrition the required priority.