Global action plan on child wasting - Accelerating progress in preventing and managing child wasting and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals
Author: World Health Organisation
Year: 2020
Resource type: Report
Introduction
In 2015, the world committed to eliminating all forms of malnutrition by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To do so, the SDGs incorporated the World Health Assembly targets to reduce the proportion of children suffering from wasting[1] to <5% by 2025, and <3% by 2030.
Yet, since these targets were adopted, the proportion of wasted children has remained largely unchanged[2]. Today, an estimated 7.3% (50 million) of all children under five suffer from wasting at any given time[3]. Three-quarters of these children live in development settings, while the remainder are affected by humanitarian crisis. Wasting affects children in virtually every continent on the planet, but the largest number of children suffering from wasting are today found in South Asia.
To achieve the SDG targets on wasting and undernutrition, a crucial policy shift is needed, increasing efforts to prevent all forms of malnutrition. There is an urgent need to develop and scale-up radically improved solutions addressing the fundamental drivers of malnutrition. The immediate drivers are well known: frequent common childhood illnesses, unhealthy diets, and low birth weight. Children in disadvantaged circumstances experience recurrent infections and may not receive the right food at the right time or have increased, but unmet, requirements for essential nutrients due to preventable illnesses; infants born with low birth weight are vulnerable to further growth failure in the first year. The underlying drivers of wasting are, however, complex and vary across seasons, regions and contexts, but include environmental conditions, inadequate or lack of hygiene and sanitation, household food insecurity and lack of age-appropriate caregiver and child interactions. Such conditions are in turn the consequence of inadequate functioning of food, health and other systems, including social protection. Emergencies and disasters may trigger or aggravate the incidence of child wasting.
The fragmented response by actors, including the UN System, and unpredictable financing limits the effectiveness and efficiency of treatment coverage for children. Therefore, a more purposeful, systematic, transparent and accountable collaboration that leverages the collective strengths of all stakeholders – including governments, UN agencies, civil society and the private sector- more effectively is urgently needed to help countries accelerating progress in the forthcoming “decade of delivery” on the wasting-related SDGs and WHA targets.
Draft of the Global Action Plan on child wasting document
On 14th July 2019, the Principals of the UN agencies directly involved in the prevention and treatment of child wasting issued a joint statement calling for greater action to address this urgent problem. In that statement, the agencies committed to putting together a Global Action Plan (GAP) for the prevention and treatment of child wasting. This lead to a series of regional consultations amongst UN agencies and their partners in Africa and Asia. This consultation helped identify current challenges and future opportunities to accelerate progress on child wasting. On 5th December, a consultation with CSOs, bilateral donors and other partners took place, providing additional specific suggestions for the focus, principles and priorities under the GAP. Finally, a three-day Technical Consultation was organized by WHO on 16th-19th December 2019 bringing together academics and field technicians with the goal of further describing key technical and research priorities to be included under the GAP.
This first draft of the GAP aims to capture key elements of these discussions and consultations and offer an opportunity for all stakeholders to further contribute to the revision and expansion of the GAP. We have not yet defined the level of ambition for all the commitments (marked with an “X”), the emphasis having been on what the priorities should be. These will be completed before finalization of the GAP including the suggestions received. Upon completion of this public consultation, the UN agencies (under the leadership of WHO) will consolidate all inputs and produce a final draft of the GAP to be endorsed by the Principals of the five UN agencies (FAO, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, WHO). Our aim is to have a final draft of the GAP available by 24th February 2020.
The endorsed GAP, along with immediate UN actions to support its implementation will be shared publicly in early March 2020. Discussions to identify commitments and actions by governments and other key stakeholders will continue throughout 2020, with the aim to release the action plan at the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit, to be held in December 2020.
Download
draft-global-action-plan-childwasting.pdf (PDF, 947kb)
More like this
en-net: Online public consultation - Draft of the Global Action Plan (GAP) on child wasting
I would like to bring to your attention the opportunity to contribute to the online public consultation for the draft of the Global Action Plan (GAP) on child wasting. Please...
FEX: UN Global Action Plan (GAP) Framework for Child Wasting and the Asia and Pacific Region
View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici By Harriet Torlesse, Roland Kupka, Warren T K Lee, Britta Schumacher and Angela de Silva Harriet Torlesse...
FEX: Developing the Yemen Action Plan on child wasting: A success story
View this article as a pdf Karima Al-Hada'a is a Planning and Liaison Specialist at the Scaling-Up Nutrition Secretariat at the Ministry of Planning and International...
FEX: Improving the way we address acute malnutrition in Africa’s drylands
View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici By Helen Young, Abdalmonim Osman, Dr. Marshak, Anne Radday, Emmanuella Olesambu, Nola Jenkins, Darana...
‘Reset’ of wasting prevention and treatment to catalyse action and accountability
Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN) has submitted a game-changer on a 'wasting reset' that has been included as part of the game-changers of Action Track 1 for the UN FSS....
FEX: Reflections on the United Nations draft Global Action Plan on wasting
View this article as a pdf Click here to listen to an interview with the author on the ENN podcast channel By Steve Collins In July 2019, ENN produced a special edition of...
FEX: One UN for nutrition in Afghanistan - Translating global policy into action to tackle wasting
This is a summary of a Field Exchange field article that was included in issue 63 - a special edition on child wasting in South Asia. The original article was authored by...
FEX: Launch of the Nutrition Year of Action
View this article as a pdf In December 2020, the Governments of Canada and Bangladesh, in partnership with the Government of Japan, hosted a virtual launch of the Nutrition...
FEX: Editorial
View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici Dear readers, In July 2019, we produced a special edition of Field Exchange (issue 60) on continuum of...
FEX: One UN for nutrition in Afghanistan - Translating global policy into action: A policy shift to tackle wasting
View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici Click here to listen to an interview with Dr. Jamil Bawary, Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition...
FEX: UNICEF and WFP partnership framework to address wasting in children globally
UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) have launched a new partnership framework to support the work of both agencies to enact a paradigm shift that places emphasis on...
FEX: Guidance on accountability to affected populations
The Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC) is committed to integrating its commitments on accountability to affected populations (AAP) in the Nutrition in Emergency (NiE) response. As...
NEX: A catalyst for scale-up in SUN countries: Experiences of technical assistance for Tajikistan and the Philippines
ENN's SUN Knowledge Management team with contributions from Nutrition International (NI) and Maximising the Quality of Scaling Up Nutrition Plus (MQSUN+) Click here and...
FEX: Scaling up child wasting prevention and treatment in the context of stunting prevention in Indonesia
View this article as a pdf Leveraging efforts for joint wasting and stunting programming in Indonesia This article outlines how wasting treatment was integrated into stunting...
FEX: Wasting and stunting risk factors in Somalian internally displaced person settlements
View this article as a pdf This article summarises the key findings of a recent Link Nutrition Causal Analysis (NCA) study conducted in Settlements for the Internally...
FEX: Editorial
View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici A warm welcome to our 63rd edition of Field Exchange, focused on child wasting in South Asia. The idea for...
FEX: Summary of the development process for the guideline on the prevention and treatment of wasting
View this article as a pdf Background The World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with UNICEF, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Food...
FEX: UNICEF Nutrition Strategy 2020-2030
View this article as a pdf Report Summary1 In December 2020, UNICEF published its new Nutrition Strategy, to guide the next ten years of its nutrition related activities. The...
NEX: Regional nutrition strategies to address the double burden in the Eastern Mediterranean
Dr Ayoub Al Jawaldeh has been the Regional Adviser for Nutrition in the WHO Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean Region since 2009, leading the Regional Nutrition...
en-net: 30th June ENN Webinar: FEX 60/ GAP on child wasting
The 60th edition of Field Exchange focused on the continuity of care (CoC) for treatment of children with wasting, providing a rich snapshot of programme experiences and...
Reference this page
World Health Organisation (2020). Global action plan on child wasting - Accelerating progress in preventing and managing child wasting and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. www.ennonline.net/globalactionplanonchildwasting
(ENN_6549)