Steve Collins

Background

About Steve Collins

Starvation in the 21st century is a disgrace. I'm driven by the imperative to end this and the vision and persistence to do so at a global scale. My philosophy is not to import solutions but to add value locally. Starting in 1985, I worked in all the major African famines of the 1990s. I redefined the limits of human adaptation to starvation and developed protocols to assess and treat starving adults that were adopted by the WHO. I was awarded an MBE for this work. From 1998, I focused on the treatment of child starvation, pioneering a new community-based model to treat severe starvation in peoples homes rather than in hospitals. This treatment model, called the Community Based Management of Acute Malnutrition, has now been adopted as best practice by the UN and rolled out globally, treating more than 4 million children in 2018 alone, saving more than lives. In order to link treatment with prevention, I started to develop and manufacture effective nutritional products made out of locally grown ingredients, in countries affected by malnutrition. This work has led to the development of a plant-based food for the treatment of severe malnutrition that is more effective than the current milk based global golden standard, has a much lower carbon footprint and is at least 20% lower cost. The global adoption of this new recipe will lead to almost starving children being treated at no additional cost. In I started Valid International to drive global change in the management of undernutrition and in 2005, Valid Nutrition, a social business to research, develop and manufacture nutritional products. At home In Ireland, I run a 140 acre diverse organic hill farm, growing blueberries, aronia and raising Dexters. I am a qualified medical doctor with an MD doctorate, an MBE, a DSc(hc.), and an MBBS(Lond.). I am Ireland's first Senior Ashoka fellow and I have published ~50 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited times.