FAO participated to a workshop of the Foreign Policy and Global Health Initiative (FPGH) on “Best Practices on Nutrition in the Fight Against non-communicable diseases” (NCDs) that was held at WHO Headquarter on 16 November 2018.

Starting in 2008, Global Health and Foreign Policy has been a regular item on the UN General Assembly agenda. A report which informs the discussions and responds to the annual resolution is prepared by the WHO Director-General. The reports and resolutions resulting from this initiative consistently explore different areas of collaboration between health and foreign policy, provide recommendations, and contribute to better understanding of the importance of health in international policy and developmental discussions.  

Against this background, the workshop aimed at showcasing current national policies to promote adequate and healthy nutrition as a tool to fight NCDs. 

The specific objectives of the workshop were:

• To share best practices of FPGH Initiative Member Countries to improve nutrition;
• To highlight the unique opportunity of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition for the prevention and control of NCDs and encourage making new SMART commitments;
• To discuss with and learn from non-State Actors about existing and new programmes and policies to improve nutrition in the fight to reduce diet-related NCDs.

The opening presentation of the workshop featured remarks by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO and by the Permanent Representatives of Brazil; Thailand Indonesia, the Deputy Permanent Representative of France and the Director of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement Secretariat. 

Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, Director of the FAO Office in Geneva, together with Dr. Francesco Branca, Director of the WHO Department of Nutrition for Health and Development, made a joint presentation on the status and commitments of the UN Decade on Nutrition. In her presentation, she highlighted that new evidence provided by the State of Food Security and nutrition (SOFI) in the world report (September 2018) continues to signal a rise in world’s hunger with 821 million undernourished people on the planet. She explained that the situation is largely attributed to persistent instability in conflict-ridden regions, adverse climate events that have hit many regions of the world and economic slowdowns that have affected more peaceful regions and worsened the food security situation.

WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health, Ms. Svetlana Akselrod, closed the seminar underscoring that food is not only feed but nutrition as well, and an important means to good health. Attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will not be possible without good health, she said, and combatting NCDs is one important way to achieve them. Ms. Akselrod underlined that 63% of all global deaths in 2017 has NCDs as cause, and adequate nutrition is one way to tackle them. She recalled Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus words in the opening of the seminar saying that we must “walk the talk”.