Undernutrition costs Tajikistan US$41 million annually

In February 2012, the World Bank and The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) jointly developed a report to calculate the potential human and economic benefits to be gained from increasing nutrition investments in Tajikistan. This report provides compelling evidence of the potential to improve health and economic outcomes through scaling up effective nutrition interventions and introducing new proven interventions to reduce the direct causes of undernutrition in order to support the government of Tajikistan’s commitment to the well-being and prosperous future of the Tajik people.

The report is a situational analysis examines and quantifies the scope of undernutrition in Tajikistan by presenting: (1) the epidemiology of undernutrition; (2) an estimate of the health consequences of undernutrition in terms of mortality and disability adjusted life years (DALYs), and the economic losses due to lost workforce and productivity; (3) the health, social protection, and agriculture and food intervention systems relevant to delivering interventions for improving nutrition; (4) the current coverage of nutrition interventions; and (5) the potential economic gains achievable by scaling up effective nutrition interventions.

Undernutrition costs Tajikistan US$41 million annually. These losses are caused by lost productivity due to increased mortality and reduced cognitive and physical development. Workforce lost to deaths from undernutrition costs the country US$ 12.3 million a year; productivity lost to stunting, iodine deficiency, childhood anemia and low birth weight costs US$ 28.6 million; together they amount to approximately US$ 41 million. Iodine deficiency alone accounts for almost 40 percent of the workforce’s lost productivity. The effects of undernutrition are sometimes invisible and not fully understood over time. Therefore, the burden of undernutrition could be even greater than estimated.

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