Topic: SAM (Prevention & treatment of Severe Acute Malnutrition)

In this podcast, accompanying Field Exchange issue 65, Natalie Sessions (ENN Senior Nutritionist) talks to Sweta Banerjee, Nutrition Specialist for Welthungerhilfe’s India country programme.

They discuss the article Multi-sector nutrition programming: ‘Nutrition Smart Villages’ in Bangladesh and India. 

Community health programmes are neither cheap nor easy to implement well, but they remain a good and wise investment that can yield important dividends. The latest evidence shows that for every dollar invested in community health there is a 10 dollar return of good health and productivity (Dahn B 2015). Current pressures on health systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and the difficulties in responding adequately, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic, have overwhelmingly shown the critical importance of the community health system. The second Institutionalizing Community Health Conference (ICHC) that took place between 19-22 April 2021, brought us up-to-date with the gains that have been made in community health systems, the investments currently in place, the gaps that still exist and the investment priorities for low resource and hard-to-reach settings.

This podcast reflects on one of the articles published within the special edition of Field Exchange on wasting in South Asia that describes Nepal's experiences in scaling of integrated management of acute malnutrition or IMAM programming. What began as pilot programs way back in 2008 is now implemented in over half the countries districts. We were delighted to have the opportunity to interview Mr. Kedar Raj Parajuli, chief of the Nutrition Section of the Ministry of Health and Population in Nepal, to share further insights into the experiences on their pathway to scale up.

This podcast reflects on an article within the special edition of Field Exchange on wasting in South Asia that describes the challenges and developments around wasting management in Afghanistan. To delve into some of the details of integrated management of acute malnutrition or IMAM in Afghanistan, we were honoured to interview Dr. Jamil Bawary, the IMAM Officer for the Public Nutrition Department of the Ministry of Public Health in Afghanistan.

In this webinar, the Field Exchange Editors appraised the Global Action Plan (GAP) on Child Wasting: A framework for action to accelerate progress in preventing and managing child wasting and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals which was published in March 2020 by five UN agencies (UNICEF, WFP, WHO, UNHCR, FAO). The appraisal was based on reflections within the 60th edition of Field Exchange which focused on the continuity of care (CoC) for treatment of children with wasting and highlighted priority areas of action. The aim of this exercise was to invite constructive, collective and practical engagement to support the GAP development and roll out. The Field Exchange editors were honoured to be joined by key UN representatives in the webinar to contribute to the conversation and share their plans in the development and finalization of the GAP on Child Wasting.

In this podcast, Steve Collins, who conceptualised and pioneered the Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) model, talks about the current developments in wasting, in light of the United Nations draft Global Action Plan on wasting, including his views on the challenges of achieving treatment at scale, what needs to be done differently and how to engage new actors in these processes.

A full article on Steve’s reflections can be found here in Field Exchange 62, March 2020.

ENN’s Regional Knowledge Management Specialist for Asia, Dr. Charulatha Banerjee, speaks to Grana Pu Selvi, World Vision India and author of the article in Field Exchange Issue 58 titled Treatment of severe acute malnutrition through the Integrated Child Development Scheme in Jharkand State, India.

Grana shares the difficulties faced in setting up the project and what has been learnt from the experience for implementation ahead. We also briefly speak with Mahesh Nathan from the WASH team of World Vision. Mahesh outlined the organisation’s approaches to including WASH interventions in projects to improve nutrition outcomes.

Lillian Karanja-Odhiambo, ENN’s Knowledge Management specialist for East Africa speaks to Mueni Mutunga the Chief of Nutrition from UNICEF’s Sudan country office about the experience of scaling up CMAM in Sudan. The podcast captures UNICEF’s perspective on the evolution in CMAM programming; successes in garnering government ownership; the role of information systems in informing programming and how scale up was achieved in a low resource setting. The interview provides useful insight into the interplay of humanitarian and development programming in approaching the Management of Acute Malnutrition.

In this podcast, Tarig Mekkawi, Nutrition specialist with UNICEF Sudan, speaks to Salwa Sorkti, the Director of the National Nutrition Program in the Federal Ministry of Health of Sudan about the experience of CMAM scale up in the country. The podcast captures the perspective of the Ministry of Health’s on the evolution in CMAM programming; successes in garnering government ownership; the role of information systems in informing programming and how scale up was achieved in a low resource setting. The interview provides useful insight into the interplay of humanitarian and development programming in approaching the Management of Acute Malnutrition. 

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Over the years the scope of ENN’s work has expanded beyond a focus on humanitarian contexts to encompass a broader set of issues around drivers of wasting and stunting in both high burden and emergency contexts. We are also increasingly interested in the evolving policy and programming environment around malnutrition treatment and prevention. ENN is currently engaged in exploring the relationship between wasting and stunting (see the recent blog piece by Carmel Dolan here), stunting in emergencies, and on how stunting or wasting focused initiatives interact in practice.

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Au fil des années, la portée du travail d'ENN s'est étendue au-delà de l'accent mis initialement sur les contextes humanitaires pour englober un ensemble plus large de problèmes liés à l’émaciation et au retard de croissance dans des contextes d'urgence et/ou des contextes où la prévalence est élevée. Nous sommes de plus en plus intéressés par l'évolution de la politique et de l'environnement de programmation autour du traitement et de la prévention de la malnutrition. ENN est actuellement engagé dans l'exploration de la relation entre l’émaciation et le retard de croissance (voir le récent billet de Carmel Dolan sur le blog ici), le retard de croissance dans les situations d'urgence, et la façon dont les initiatives ciblées sur le retard de croissance et l’émaciation interagissent dans la pratique.

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I hope some of you have heard of No Wasted Lives. For those who haven’t, now is the time to join forces with this coalition of partners working to address the biggest challenges we face today in the prevention and treatment acute malnutrition.Our ambitions are large and we need your help to accelerate global action to double the number of children receiving treatment to 6 million a year by 2020.

Read the transcript of this podcast in English

Lire la transcription du podcast en français

Hello, I am Bridget Fenn, ENN’s long standing lead research investigator. I recently I gave a virtual presentation about the REFANI to participants at a research conference in Islamabad organised by Action Against Hunger. Despite the early start (5.30 a.m.), presenting remotely and missing the all-important human interaction afforded by face-to-face meetings, the presentation was very well received and there were plenty of questions and comments from the attendees…more about these below. 

Some of you will know that ENN has been coordinating a project with the expert steer of around 30 child growth and nutrition specialists from academia, donor and operational agencies. Collectively, we are known as the Wasting-Stunting Technical Interest Group (WAST-TIG) and we have been interacting across various work streams for a few years thanks to generous funding from Irish Aid and USAID OFDA.  

Dr Charulatha Banerjee, ENN’s Asia Regional Knowledge Management Specialist caught up with Ms Mridula Sinha Director General of the Jharkhand State Nutrition Mission earlier this month to understand the evolution of the Nutrition Mission in the state, work done so far and plans for the future.

Ms Sinha has been working in child health and nutrition in Jharkhand for many years. In this interview she talks about the formation of the State Nutrition Mission, the complexities of nutrition governance in India and the architecture of the Mission as an independent body with the power to convene related departments. She presents the challenges faced by Jharkhand State, which is less than 2 decades old, and also the huge potential given the strong political will to render the State malnutrition free by 2030. She mentions the role of the private sector in nutrition in the State as well as the work of UNICEF and other partners to support the State Nutrition Mission’s work. 

Greetings! I am Dr Charulatha Banerjee, one of ENN’s Regional KM specialists working in Asia. 

On the 9th of January I visited the Indian state of Jharkhand to meet stakeholders working in nutrition. Jharkhand is a very recent “member state” of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, joining in September 2016, it is the 3rd Indian state to sign on to this global initiative. Jharkhand joins the states of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, and 58 national governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America that have committed to working towards reducing their high burden of malnutrition.