‘Mind the Hunger Gap’ national campaign launched

The first phase of the campaign will involve calling on all dieitians in the UK to highlight what the BDA calls "the national disgrace that, conservatively estimated, involves around 1,000,000 older people in the UK eating less than one square meal a day". It says the figure does not include older people in a hospital or care homes, just those older people living in our community or, as they have become, the 'invisible' population. BDA chairman Helen Davidson said: "Malnutrition does not discriminate and impacts on people regardless of age, gender or race. "The World Health Organisation cites malnutrition as the greatest single threat to the world's public health, it is still widely believed that malnutrition is restricted to the third world population. Quite simply, it is not." Mind the Hunger Gap is being launched as an online-based campaign and dieitians will be directed to the campaign website (www.mingthehungergap.com) to download various materials and campaign tools to highlight the issue locally. The BDA is to raise the issue on a national level. Although primarily a dieitian-led campaign, the website will also have tools that members of the public can use to add their support. The campaign is calling for local and national support to highlight: • Malnutrition costs over £13 billion across the UK. It is vital to protect current services, and extend provision to reduce these spiralling costs of care packages and readmissions • Protect at least one meal a day by ring-fencing funding for community meal provision at a local level • Dietitians have the expertise to lead the nutrition pathway across the whole health and social care system • Social isolation and fragmented services have left older people excluded and invisible. Food is a basic human right and it's everybody's responsibility to stamp out starvation in their community • With social care budgets being devolved for local implementation, there is an opportunity now to plan and promote collaborative solutions at a local level.