PAKISTAN’S nutrition crisis is not short of diagnosis. What it lacks is the machinery and political discipline to act on what is known. That was the most useful message to emerge from DawnMedia’s two-day Act for Nutrition conference in Islamabad, where experts argued that malnutrition cannot be confined to the health sector. Over four in 10 children under five are stunted, while the economic cost of malnutrition is estimated at $17bn annually. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal’s promise that the Planning Commission will take ownership of nutrition and early childhood development is therefore significant. It recognises that this is a human-capital and development crisis involving health, agriculture, education, water, sanitation,........

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