Two-Day Conference Opens in Islamabad as Pakistan Confronts Nutrition Crisis

Pakistan’s nutrition crisis is costing the country more than $17 billion a year, while more than 40% of children under five remain stunted. Those figures frame a two-day international conference in Islamabad titled “Act For Nutrition: The Emergency We Can No Longer Ignore.”

Held at the Serena Hotel, the conference brings together policymakers, international development leaders, health professionals and nutrition experts. Its stated aim is to push the national discussion beyond statistics and toward practical interventions that can improve nutrition and protect Pakistan’s human capital and future generations.

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The nutrition crisis does not look the same in Tharparkar as it does in Chitral or in southern Punjab.

Dawn CEO Nazafreen Saigol Lakhani said the crisis varies sharply across the country. It “does not look the same in Tharparkar as it does in Chitral or in southern Punjab,” she said, meaning that the response cannot be uniform either.

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Nutrition is not a problem for a health ministry to solve alone.

Lakhani said the discussions would cover the economics of financing nutrition, the reasons children can fail to grow even when food is available, and the experiences of women and mothers who bear much of the burden. She also argued that nutrition cannot be left to the health ministry alone. Pakistan loses close to $17 billion annually through malnutrition’s consequences, she said, “more than what we typically borrow from the International Monetary Fund in any given year.”

The conference is intended to create a shared understanding of the steps required and begin developing a clear, practical roadmap for coordinated action.

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We spend comparatively little energy addressing a loss nearly as large, happening quietly, inside our own households.