On July 28, the Fred N. Binka School of Public Health, UHAS, hosted Professor Ina Danquah, a Robert Bosch Professor for Sustainable Nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is also the team leader of the Climate Change, Nutrition and Health Research Group at the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH), which is under the medical faculty of Heidelberg University, Germany’s oldest university.
Prof. Paul Amuna, the immediate past Dean of Binka School, told the special guest that UHAS is striving for internationalization and pledged the institution’s support to ensure that UHAS becomes the hub for this partnership in Africa.
Below are excerpts from Prof. Danquah’s presentation entitled, “Climate change, nutrition and health: A three-pronged research agenda”.
Nutritional conditions and dietary practices are inevitably linked to climate change. Unreliable rainfalls and extreme weather events lead to harvest losses, both in terms of quantity and quality of the crops. This causes stagnation in the reduction of undernutrition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). At the same time, modernized diets in SSA are characterized by high intakes of animal-based products and processed foods. These foods are not only unhealthy but also come along with an immense environmental footprint.
In order to combat existing impacts of climate change on food security and nutrition, viable adaptation strategies, that are nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific, are urgently needed. Home gardens with fruits and vegetables may compensate for existing harvest losses and nutrient deficiencies among smallholder farming families. In combination with nutrition and health counselling according to evidence-based guidelines, such integrated approaches constitute a promising adaptation strategy.
Yet, adaptation has its limits. Climate change mitigation is equally important, and may confer relevant nutrition and health co-benefits. In order to use the mitigation potential of the food sector, we need to promote lifestyle changes by transforming the food system towards sustainability in the dimensions of environment, economy, socio-culture, and health. Possible programmes comprise individual approaches, such as dietary interventions employing the sustainable diet concept, and systemic approaches, such as sustainable meal programmes in health facilities and schools.
These aetiological and methodological challenges for research into climate change, nutrition and health, call for interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral collaborations.