Steve Race

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) on securing this debate. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am proud to co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on nutrition for development, alongside the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell). Nutrition and immunisation are closely linked. Children with poor nutrition are often those who are most vulnerable to infectious diseases and need protection from vaccines, yet vaccines are less effective in malnourished children and often do not trigger strong immunity. The children whom specialised immunisation programmes are trying to reach are also the least likely to have access to food and nutrition services. Immunisation has the most impact when it is delivered alongside other interventions and integrated into primary health systems. By addressing under-nutrition and under-immunisation simultaneously, we can significantly improve health outcomes and vaccine efficacy, as well as provide interventions in the most cost-effective way. I saw this for myself on a recent visit to Isiolo in Kenya, hosted by UNICEF and organised by United Against Malnutrition and Hunger. We saw how in rural areas, nutrition interventions are delivered alongside vaccinations, healthcare education and maternal healthcare, to ensure that people have wraparound healthcare interventions that save lives. That was funded by UK development assistance and delivered by partners including Action Against Hunger. If a woman walks for 20 km or more with her children once a week for nutrition, they are less likely to walk the same distance, at a different time, to a different place, for vaccines. Integrating the services is paramount to good healthcare. This February, ahead of the Nutrition for Growth summit, I met the chief executive officer of Gavi, Dr Sania Nishtar, to discuss the important role that Gavi is playing in delivering these integrated services. Dr Nishtar spoke about the new $30 million programme to integrate nutrition and immunisation interventions in Ethiopia through the UK-founded Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, as well as UNICEF Ethiopia and Gavi, with support from the UK through Gavi’s matching fund mechanism. Ethiopia has one of the highest numbers—a staggering 1.1 million—of zero-dose children, who have not received a single dose of routine vaccines. That statistic is exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic, conflict and displacement. The pilot programme aims to reach around 140,000 of those zero-dose children in areas with the highest dual burden of malnutrition and infectious disease, providing cost-effective and efficient interventions to help children to survive and thrive.