(click on the covers of the publications to download them)
Nutrition SurveysNutrition programming
SBCC toolkit
from ENN
A number of recent reviews of crises, including Syria (ENN 2014), Lebanon and the Ukraine (GNC-ENN 2015) have raised questions about the humanitarian nutrition response in contexts where levels of wasting are not elevated or high in terms of emergency thresholds, but where stunting is prevalent.
ENN decided to investigate the implications of operating in situations of protracted crisis where levels of stunting may be high and of concern. This brief investigation included a review of documents and informal discussions with a number of nutrition focal points in some of the donors and agencies. The purpose is to begin to explore the issues and pose questions and in so doing get the issue of stunting in protracted contexts higher up the nutrition agenda
Download: Stunting-Brief-2015_WEB_01022016.pdf (PDF, 1.3mb)
From Save the Children web site.
As stated above, malnutrition is one of the major threats to child survival during an emergency and for those who survive it, it can also have tremendous consequences on their cognitive, social, motor skill, physical and emotional development. If caught in time malnutrition can usually be treated but this is not always the case. Further management of acute malnutrition in infants is complicated by a lack of evidence and knowledge about diagnosis and the most appropriate treatment protocols in different contexts. For a myriad of reasons prevention of malnutrition must be the goal, with treatment as a safety net. The best way to prevent malnutrition is through ensuring optimal feeding and care for children through supporting exclusive breastfeeding, appropriate complementary foods, and a supportive care environment – the backbone of IYCF-E programming.
From the Conference Brochure:
“Action Against Hunger and Birkbeck University are pleased to welcome you to HUNGER TALKS, a one day event that we hope will become a regular feature in the nutrition calendar.
“The aim of HUNGER TALKS is to bring together leading voices from the frontlines of the fight against hunger.
“In this first instalment, HUNGER TALKS will look at hunger from a broad perspective; not only from a Nutrition or Food Security & Livelihoods perspective, but by exploring ways in which these two come together.
“This year’s HUNGER TALKS will focus on what it means to integrate Nutrition and Food Security & Livelihoods in the 21st century, where the opportunities lie and where the challenges may lie.
“To do so, we have invited a panel of fi very experienced and innovative speakers:
Saul Guerrero – Chair man
Abigail Perry – DFID
Stephen Spratt – Research Fellow, IDS
Mark Davies – Programme Manager Social Protection, IDS
Filippo Dibari – Valid International/UCL (Institute of Global Health)
Leena Camadoo – TWIN
Click here for the bio of the speakers, the programme details and the location.
The participation is OPEN to anybody interested.
Source: Rapid SMS – http://www.rapidsms.org/
In 2011, WHO reports:
“The use of mobile and wireless technologies to support the achievement of health objectives (mHealth) has the potential to transform the face of health service delivery across the globe.
A powerful combination of factors is driving this change. These include rapid advances in mobile technologies and applications, a rise in new opportunities for the integration of mobile health into existing eHealth services, and the continued growth in coverage of mobile cellular networks.” (download the entire doc)
(To learn more about m-Health, read this paper from the WHO Bulletin: Point of care in your pocket: a research agenda for the field of m-health)
The same WHO document mentions a wide range of applications, but regretfully does not include the treatment or the prevention of malnutrition, although the potential is there. These are few examples:
Some of the organizations with promising capacities to design SMS platforms, and helping in fighting malnutrition, are listed here:
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Note that:
the Forum on Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition will be preparing a more detailed Technical Brief on the subject of M-health and E-health in the coming months.
Feel free to contact the Forum, if you are interested in m-health & nutrition, or in any other aspect related to Community-management of Acute Malnutrition.
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Question: you know any other experience in this area of nutrition and m-health? Worth reporting on this blog? Please, share that: leave a comment (down here), or contact me.
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“These minimum Reporting Package (MRP) User Guidelines are intended to outline the definitions, reporting categories and performance indicators for monitoring and reporting on three feeding programmes using the MRP software.
“The programmes are: targeted Supplementary Feeding Programmes (SFPs), Outpatient Therapeutic Programmes (OTPs) and Stabilisation Centres (SCs).
“There is also guidance on interpreting and taking action on programme performance indicators.
“The audience for the guidelines are nutrition programme coordinators and M&E staff of NGOs involved in the monitoring and reporting process.”
On this blog you can find more information about management of acute malnutrition, and ready to use foods for undernutrition treatment.
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The organization Action Against Hunger has released a brave, land marking “detailed analysis of current spending on nutrition and of the adequacy of current aid reporting systems“.
Despite the issues related to data collection, the results are striking:
The same document reports also important recommendations for the future.
Download the entire paper, here.
(click directly on the flowchart for an enlarged view)
In a recent document (2011), USAID, in collaboration with the UN Global Nutrition Cluster, UNHCR , WFP and other organizations, suggest which type of programme and food commodities are more adequate.
However, it was concluded that there is no one food product that can meet every kind of programming goal, and no one programming approach that fits all needs.
The same panel developed decision trees and few flow charts to help policy makers and donors in taking more informed decisions about programmes and choice of food-products.
The original program guidance is available here, whereas another version of the same, visible above, was adjusted in one chapter of my PhD thesis.
The planning, calculation, and monitoring application for food assistance programmes, NutVal 3.0 has an expanded database of commodities and products, and new population sub-groups to use for asssessing the adequacy of food assistance. NutVal is designed to run on Excel 2003 and later versions.
Download the most recent version of NutVal
NutVal was developed UNHCR, WFP, IGH/UCL and Global Nutrition Cluster.
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This blog hosts other posts related to the use of nutritional software.
The latest number of Field Exchange, a journal published by ENN, contains a summary of a recent research paper describing how to use “Linear programming to design low cost, local RUTF” with the aid of Microsoft Excel software.
Whereas the original paper abstract can be found on The Journal of Nutrition web site, in the Field Exchange journal (issue 43, part 1), the article summary is available (for free) at page 36, including an “adapted” flow chart with the step sequence proposed for the design (see beneath), the pre-testing and the trialling of these products, currently in high demand in feeding programmes around the world.
The authors of the original paper are Filippo Dibari (author also of this blog), El Hadji I. Diop, Steven Collins, and Andrew Seal from Valid International and the University College of London.
More information about the Linear Programming, applied to the field of nutrition, is also available from another post in this same blog.