Singh Samrat, Nourozi Sara, Acharya Laxman, Thapa Sridhar
School of Public Health, St Mary's Campus, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, UK.
Partnership for Child Development, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, UK.
J Nutr Sci. 2020 Oct 9;9:e51. doi: 10.1017/jns.2020.43. eCollection 2020.
The objective of the paper is to analyse changes in food commodity prices and estimate the potential effects of food price change on nutrition security in Nepal in the context of COVID-19 contagion control measures. It presents a comparative intra-country observational study design looking at events before and during the pandemic (after implementation of contagion control measures). The study design includes three districts, enabling comparison between diverse agro-ecological zones and geographical contexts. The methodology consists of primary data collection, modelling and quantitative analysis. The analysis is based on actual school meal food baskets which represent culturally and nutritionally optimised food baskets, developed by the local community and notional typical household food baskets. End May/early June 2020 is the 'Post-COVID-19' reference point, the same time period in 2019 i.e. June 2019 is the 'Pre-COVID-19' reference point. The study finds a substantial increase in food commodity prices across food groups and districts with marked inter-district variation. For school meal basket, all micronutrients show large average declines ranging from 9⋅5 % for zinc to 11 % for vitamin-A. For household food baskets on average, vitamin-A reduced 37 % followed by iron at 19 %, reduction in zinc is low due to the high zinc content in whole grain cereals. COVID-19 control measures are likely to have contributed to substantial price inflation over the reference period with potentially damaging effects on nutrition security in Nepal with serious implications for vulnerable populations.
本文的目的是分析食品商品价格的变化，并在新冠疫情防控措施的背景下，估计食品价格变化对尼泊尔营养安全的潜在影响。它呈现了一种国内比较观察性研究设计，着眼于疫情之前和期间（在实施防控措施之后）的情况。该研究设计涵盖三个地区，以便在不同的农业生态区和地理环境之间进行比较。研究方法包括原始数据收集、建模和定量分析。分析基于实际的学校供餐食品篮，这些食品篮代表了由当地社区制定的文化和营养优化食品篮，以及概念性的典型家庭食品篮。2020年5月底/6月初是“新冠疫情后”参考点，2019年的同一时期即2019年6月是“新冠疫情前”参考点。研究发现，各食品类别和各地区的食品商品价格大幅上涨，且地区间差异显著。对于学校供餐食品篮，所有微量营养素的平均降幅都很大，从锌的9.5%到维生素A的11%不等。对于家庭食品篮，平均而言，维生素A减少了37%，其次是铁减少了19%，由于全谷物谷物中锌含量较高，锌的减少幅度较小。新冠疫情防控措施可能在参考期内导致了大幅价格通胀，对尼泊尔的营养安全产生了潜在的破坏性影响，对弱势群体具有严重影响。
