For over half of the sickness and deaths in Kenya, and far more than that in children, are caused by zinc, iron and vitamin A deficiencies, according to health experts.
It’s a gap so major, as mothers wean babies onto nutritionally empty porridge and the rest of us eat ugali with not one inherent trace of nutritional value.
After a year in which ginger and honey moved to revered positions as immunity aids, it is perhaps time we got to grips with the food gaps that are killing us every year. For over half of the sickness and deaths in Kenya, and far more than that in children, are caused by zinc, iron and vitamin A deficiencies, according to health experts.
It’s a gap so major, as mothers wean babies onto nutritionally empty porridge and the rest of us eat ugali with not one inherent trace of nutritional value, that, in 2012, the government mandated food producers to add key nutrients to our maize and wheat flours, salt, and vegetable oils.
The bonus of fortified foods is that no-one needs to change their embedded eating habits to change their embedded ill health and suppressed immunity — they can, instead, just carry on as they were, but healthier.
And the difference in health is eye-widening. Without Vitamin A our immune system collapses, frequently to a lower level of immunity than those with full-blown Aids. It’s a gap that causes night blindness, seemingly for around a quarter of our population if we take the findings from a study of over 1,000 men in Nakuru Prison as a guide. It is also responsible for up to two thirds of childhood blindness, and nearly all deaths from diarrhoea and pneumonia. And it is only one of several micronutrient deficiencies across the wealthy as well as the poor.
Indeed, perhaps the worst in Kenya is zinc deficiency, which affects over 80 percent of pre-school children, causing poor wound healing, rashes, low libido in men, and lethargy.
The fact that shortages of this one micronutrient, alone, could be rendering more than four out of five Kenyans lethargic has colossal implications for development, clearly. Plus, iron deficiencies, too, cause tiredness and a lack of energy. And all these gaps make people shorter and curb brain development, causing learning difficulties, difficulties with attention span, lower educational achievements, and permanently impaired IQ.
So, the sum is low productivity and impaired potential across the entire nation, which is why food fortification is now viewed as one of the most vital development initiatives.
The World Bank says it brings its own returns of between 25 to 30 dollars for every one dollar spent, but is also a prerequisite for the success of most other initiatives too — because a country can’t run fast and long at anything with lethargy as its national byword.
Yet, it remains a massive elephant in the room in Kenyan debate and public knowledge, with one study in 2019 finding only 28 percent of Kenyans had ever even heard of food fortification.
Now that matters a lot, because when very few people have heard of something — even if it will make a world of difference to their entire lives — then it tends to suffer from a lack of attention and priority and spending, compared with the things people have heard about, like BBI.
As a result, another study in 2019, a full seven years after the mandatory imposition of food fortification, found that just 11 percent of maize flour was being fortified as per the law. So thanks to our food producers, we can stay on in four-fifths lethargy, fuelling more than half our deaths on the same, one, unviewed, unmonitored, and unprioritised cause.
But at what cost? In fact, 284,390 Kenyans died in 2019. That rose to 288,340 in 2020, with the 3,950 increase including the 1,680 deaths from Covid-19. So, to be clear, we ravaged our economy, smashed up our SME sector, destroyed employment and all the rest over a health issue that killed 1,680. And a health issue that kills over 140,000 Kenyans a year, we don’t care if 89 percent of our maize flour producers carry on illegally bypassing the solution?
Can I suggest our priorities may be a little muddled on this one? Unless we actively want to curb the growth of Kenya’s population and keep Kenyans dying, we need to shout food fortification from every hilltop and demand testing, monitoring, and compliance by our food makers: and truly improve our health, wealth, and everything.
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