Increases in income are clearly important for reducing malnutrition. Greater incomes at the household level allow families to spend more on food, clean water, hygiene and preventive and curative health care. It allows them to have a more diversified diet and to obtain more effective childcare arrangements. At the community level, greater income will eventually lead to better access to and higher quality health care, improved water and sanitation systems and greater access to information
I the pursuit to fight against malnutrion in Tanzania, a strategy that will embrace both nutrion interventions and income growth to house hold level may yield better results than any of the strategy alone.
A study done in Kagera region in Tanzania evaluated the joint contribution of income growth and nutrition interventions towards the reduction of malnutrition in Tanzania while considering other determinants of malnutrition. Results confirmed that parental education and access to health care – as proxied by the fraction of vaccinated children in the community – matter. It also showed that stunting is a cumulative process; thus, underscoring the importance of ensuring adequate nutrition from very early childhood onward. It should be noted that all the above mentioned are directly influence by the household income.
Most importantly, the study reveled that both income growth and the presence of nutrition programs in the community contribute positively and significantly to the reduction of malnutritionand,thus; to attain the nutrition MDG, a combination strategy is mandatory as income growth alone is insufficient to attain the MDG benchmark for nutrition. The same holds for nutrition interventions that reach less than half the population. Only the combination of income growth at the household level with large scale nutrition interventions was shown to be sufficient to bring about the desired results.
A combination of nutrition programs like Mkenda, A., 2004. The Benefits of Malnutrition Interventions: Empirical Evidence and Lessons to Tanzania, World Bank, unpublished pape growth monitoring and promotion, integrated care and nutrition, communications for behavioral change, supplementary feeding for women and young children, school feeding, health related services, micronutrient supplementation and food-based plus programs that will aim at increasing the income at household level are key in this fight and if well integrated the probability of overcoming malnutrion in under fives in Tanzania will increase substentially.
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