Vice President, Mutale Nalumango, says government is committed to addressing issues of nutrition in order to achieve universal access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food.
This is in accordance with Sustainable Development Goal number two which aims at ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030.
Mrs Nalumango says government is working with various cooperating partners to ensure that issues of poor nutrition are addressed in the country.
She said this after a closed-door meeting with a group of cooperating partners, representatives for Ambassadors from Germany, United Kingdom (UK), United States of America and Sweden held at her office in Lusaka today.
Mrs Nalumango said the government is working with its partners in the field of nutrition to improve human and social development which lie under Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) pillar two.
She said the purpose of the meeting was to identify gaps in the coordination agenda on nutrition issues in the country.
She added that the meeting will further help to coordinate better with Zambia’s cooperating partners in issues of nutrition.
The Vice President revealed that government is happy with the willingness of cooperating partners to continue working with Zambia and her communities to ensure that the nutrition component is looked at seriously at a very high level.
“The President last year made a commitment to zero hunger, which is SDG number two, the Sustainable Development Goal number two under the UN, he made a commitment and this is how seriously cooperating partners take us that we are not taking this lightly,” she stated.
Mrs Nalumango added that government will continue to work on addressing issues of nutrition in order to be able to save people, particularly the young ones.
“We are as government are aware that the first one thousand days of a human life is critical to the full development of a human being, the development that also affects the brain,” she said.
She observed that poorly nurtured children might not develop to desired capacity.
“And therefore, it becomes important that this group that looks at nutrition has that programme which they call the first 1000 critical days programme that looks at that,” she added.