Case Study in Nutrition Assistance

GAIN provides micronutrients on a global scale

by Kristin Helmore

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Since 2002, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), a partnership of public, private and civil society organizations, has been working with governments and food processing companies to ensure that the foods people eat—especially the poorest people, who do not have ready access to a balanced diet—are fortified with micronutrients.

GAIN, based in Geneva, was launched with an initial grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and supplementary funding from the United States Agency for International Development and the Canadian International Development Agency, channeled through the Micronutrient Initiative.

The debilitating health problems caused by micronutrient deficiencies are a drain on many countries, sapping human vitality and productivity. GAIN's position is that ending micronutrient deficiency can have a global impact on human well-being: it can lay the foundation for the elimination of poverty and for sustainable economic progress by preventing illness and death and helping millions of people become healthier, more intelligent, more educated and more productive.

Fortifying staple foods for millions

Working country by country, GAIN's aim is to ensure that commonly-consumed foods—such as wheat and maize flour, oil, sugar, salt and condiments—are fortified with micronutrients and made available at prices that guarantee access to the poorest, most nutrient-deficient communities.

To do this, GAIN requires that each country set up a permanent, public-private institution, a National Fortification Alliance, composed of representatives from the national food industry, civil society and government. Typically, 90 percent of the funding for fortification programs in GAIN project countries comes from food processing companies, who are required to build these costs into their business plans. The cost to consumers is negligible.

GAIN grants are used to help create the conditions that make the introduction of fortified foods into the market economically viable over the long term. This might include the introduction of legislation making food fortification mandatory, investment in food control systems and social marketing campaigns to encourage consumer awareness and demand.

In Côte d'Ivoire, GAIN launched a project in June 2005 with the goal of delivering palm and cottonseed oils fortified with vitamin A and wheat flour fortified with iron and folic acid to 80 percent of consumers—some 14 million people. Vitamin and mineral premixes are being added to oil and flour by the country's three vegetable oil producers and the leading flour mill. The goal is to fortify all vegetable oil and wheat flour produced in the country by the end of the three-year project, thus providing 50 percent of a person's daily needs for vitamin A and 30 percent for iron and folic acid.

In China and Vietnam, GAIN's vehicle of choice for delivering micronutrients is not grains but condiments. In China's Guizhou and Jiangsu provinces, fermented soy sauce, consumed daily by millions of people, is being fortified with iron in an effort to reduce iron-deficiency anemia in women of child-bearing age. In Vietnam, a similar GAIN project is fortifying a hugely popular fish sauce with iron, with the goal of reaching 9 million people in three years.

GAIN's overall objective is to improve the nutritional status of at least 600 million people in up to 40 developing countries by 2007, primarily by facilitating the fortification of commonly available, widely consumed local foods. So far, GAIN has approved 15 major projects in 14 countries: Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, China, Pakistan, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic and Morocco. It is expected that at full development, these 15 projects will provide essential micronutrients to an estimated 325 million people.

Kristin Helmore is a freelance journalist, formerly a correspondent at the Christian Science Monitor. She was the editor of African Farmer Magazine and has written two books on development.

This piece was originally published in Bread for the World Institute's 2006 Hunger Report, Frontline Issues in Nutrition Assistance. Find out more about the publication or order your copy from our online store.