Associate Professor in Nutrition at the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR), Dr Alexander Kalimbira, has urged people to manage their nutrition in order for them to  substantially contribute to the social economic growth of the country.

According to Dr Kalimbira poor nutrition affects  productivity and increases the chances of developing  non communicable diseases such as hypertension.

He made the remarks during his presentation titled ‘Nutrition: Key for Economic Growth,’ at the launch of Scaling Up Nutrition 3.0 strategy .

He cited an example of a study that was done in Africa in the year 2012 titled ‘Cost of hunger in Africa’ which found that Malawi lost 540 billion Malawi Kwacha due to loss of productivity, losses in education and losses in health.

“When there is bad nutrition it comes in six unfortunate baskets, the baskets are the consequences of poor nutrition,” Kalimbira said

“When there’s bad nutrition it reduced growth and development, low productivity in the workforce, reduced economic activities, increased risk of ill health, increased health care cost and increased risk of early and premature death’, these are result that may come if we don’t continue to scale up nutrition in this country.”