Nutrition

As a key technical area of the Africa's Health in 2010, the nutrition team works with African institutions, networks and partners with a focus on generating knowledge, best practices, tools, and capacity.

Priority Areas

Africa's Health in 2010 concentrates on the following priority areas:
Working with Partners to integrate and strengthen the delivery of Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) into maternal, newborn and child health programs in Africa (including safe motherhood, maternal, newborn, and child survival programs).

• Working with Partners to strengthen capacity for nutrition monitoring and care in emergencies and for addressing nutrition within programs that address chronic and acute food insecurity.
• Improving global and national policies and programs that address the nutritional needs of people living with HIV/AIDS, including the incorporation of nutrition into Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV infection, pediatric HIV, Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), and HIV treatment and care programs.
• Outcome indicators determine whether the outputs have reached the intended audience and had their intermediate effect; for example, proportion of disease outbreaks confirmed by laboratory results among those reported in a given year.

Expected Results

The project is providing technical assistance to scale-up programs with essential nutrition actions to improve infant and young child nutrition (emphasizing exclusive breastfeeding and appropriate complementary feeding) in six countries, including at least three with adult HIV prevalence over five percent. They include:

• Consensus among governments and donors on concrete actions to address malnutrition in "hot spots," particularly in West Africa
• Improved infant feeding and nutrition support incorporated into large scale PMTCT programs in three countries
• Nutrition support integrated into pediatric care and treatment programs in three countries
• Nutrition support integrated into HIV care and treatment programs in six countries

Addressing Food Security

Collaborating on nutrition and food security: Implications for the health and agriculture sectors

Africa's Health in 2010 is supporting nutritionists at WAHO in their collaboration with agriculturists at Comite Permeent Inter-Etats de Lutte Contre La Secheresse dan Le Sahel (CILSS) to forge a partnership to address food security issues. The partnership first responded to high rates of malnutrition in the Sahel in 2005, and is now also grappling with food security and malnutrition issues, and the effects of higher global food prices.

Kathleen Kurz, of Africa's Health in 2010, authored the following paper with Ismail Thiam, and presented it at the ECOWAS Nutrition Forum on September 8th, 2008 in Sierra Leone. The paper addresses both conceptual and institutional issues surrounding the collaboration between agriculture and nutrition, arguing that leadership and advocacy from the combined forces will be key to truly addressing today's challenges to food security.