by Garry Wiley | Jan 31, 2025 | Latest News, News
Steve has been working with Plan International for the last number of months, advising on strategy to deal with the famine in Sudan. He has just returned from providing support and advice on the ground there. It was around 40 years ago that he started his work on treating starvation – actually in Sudan – in the so called Band Aid era. This latest crisis is as bad as ever, with tens of millions of people are already suffering famine or on the brink of famine.
The humanitarian aid operation has a huge funding shortfall. This means that the specialised RUTF to treat malnutrition is in very short supply and wholly insufficient to meet the levels of need – which are escalating daily.
This brings the choice by the WHO around whether or not to unequivocally accept lower cost plant-based RUTF (that UNICEF confirm is about 25% lower cost than the standard recipe) into stark focus. Randomised controlled trials and real-world operational programmes have already demonstrated that soy maize and sorghum RUTF is just as effective as the current peanut and milk-based recipe.
Fully approving and actively facilitating proven plant-based RUTF would allow 25% more starving children to be treated with no additional product cost. As the treatment infrastructures are already set up, there would actually be almost no additional total cost. Or, do those in a position to act continue to listen to vested interests and restrict proven plant-based RUTF recipes, despite the desperate need and evidence supporting use? Surely there is no real choice here and we strongly urge those responsible in the respective UN agencies to act.
by Garry Wiley | Apr 16, 2020 | Latest News
Dr Steve Collins gives a hugely informative and enlightened interview to ENN podcast while discussing his candid Reflections on the UN Global Action Plan on Wasting.
by Garry Wiley | Jul 2, 2018 | Home Featured, Latest News, News
“It is scandalous that a product with several critical advantages and high quality scientific evidence to support it, can be blocked because of bureaucracy and vested interests”
Dr Steve Collins, Valid Nutrition’s Chairman, spoke candidly about his frustration at the shamefully slow pace of innovation and approval of better products to treat acute malnutrition. He presented the specific example of Valid Nutrition’s new recipe for therapeutic food (RUTF). This breakthrough, which follows from 14 year of research and development (largely funded by RUTF donors), has several clear benefits including: significantly lower cost, far better sustainability profile and is easier to produce in developing countries / regions where these products are needed.
He said it is scandalous that a product with high quality scientific evidence to support it, can be blocked because of bureaucracy and vested interests. He challenged those empowered to allow this recipe to be used, to act now. Doing so, will immediately lower the cost of treatment and allow hundreds of thousands more children to be treated within existing aid budgets.
by Garry Wiley | May 22, 2018 | Home Featured, Latest News, News
At the Global Hunger Today Conference held at University College Cork, Dr Steve Collins raised challenging questions about undue delays in the implementation of robust, scientific evidence that can transform the numbers of malnourished children receiving treatment within existing budgets.
At the Global Hunger Today conference in UCC last week, Dr Steve Collins presented the results of a large-scale randomised controlled research study, demonstrating that an innovative new RUTF product made exclusively from ingredients grown in developing countries, is more effective than the currently available UN gold standard product, and around 20% lower in cost. He asked why, given the potential to treat almost an additional 1 million severely malnourished children within existing budgets, and the sustainable benefits that local manufacture of this recipe will have on developing countries’ agriculture, has the UN acceptance process so far made no progress in allowing this innovative life-saving product to be made available to those who need it? Would this scandalous waste of resources be tolerated in other sectors?
