Topic: Link between wasting and stunting

In our latest blog, we ask if the nutrition community are shifting their approach towards targeting wasting treatment to children under 2 years old only ?

In 2020 it was estimated that 45 million children around the world were wasted¹. Only 11 million were reportedly reached with treatment in 2019 (UN 2023).  Increased international attention to the issue of wasting, recognises the need to accelerate progress on treatment (UN 2023, USAID 2022). However, given competing needs in the world of malnutrition, optimising efforts, focussing treatment on the most at risk children, and answering questions of what effective prevention looks like are all increasingly essential.

In this podcast, Eilise Brennan (ENN Nutritionist) speaks to Jee Hyun Rah (Chief of Nutrition, UNICEF, Indonesia) to discuss how the government of Indonesia integrated and scaled up wasting prevention and treatment as part of their national stunting prevention programme. This podcast accompanies the article Scaling up child wasting prevention and treatment in the context of stunting prevention in Indonesia featured in the special section on Wasting and Stunting (WaST) in Field Exchange issue 67.

In this podcast, ENN’s Tanya Khara discusses with WaSt TIG members Susan Thurstans and Michel Garenne, collaborative work that they have led exploring patterns of sex differences in undernutrition and the early life mechanisms that may underlie them.

In this podcast, we interview Sylvester Kathumba, Nutrition Focal Point in the Ministry of Health, Malawi. The prevalence of wasted children in Malawi has reduced from 4% in 2010 to 1.8% in 2018 and this podcast aims to explore how this encouraging reduction in the prevalence and burden of wasting was achieved.

This podcast aims to be  a resource, for programmers, practitioners and policy makers involved in nutrition, and  will support improved understanding of current thinking on wasting prevention. This podcast accompanies a recently published brief entitled: Best Practice in Preventing Child Wasting Within the Wider Context of Undernutrition read here.

In this podcast, we interview Khawaja Masuood Ahmed, National Coordinator Nutrition & NFA in the Ministry of National Health Services Regulations and Coordination in the Government of Pakistan. We explore some of the challenges, successes and future plans to prevent wasting in Pakistan, in the context of broader stunting reduction efforts.  

This podcast aims to be  a resource, for programmers, practitioners and policy makers involved in nutrition, and will support improved understanding of current thinking on wasting prevention. This podcast accompanies a recently published brief entitled: Best Practice in Preventing Child Wasting Within the Wider Context of Undernutrition read here. 

In this podcast, we chat to Grainne Moloney, Senior Advisor for Early Childhood Nutrition at UNICEF. We discuss UNICEF’s perspective on the prevention of wasting in the context of global action, challenges and knowledge gaps.

This podcast accompanies a recently published brief entitled: Best Practice in Preventing Child Wasting Within the Wider Context of Undernutrition (read here) and two podcasts where we explore Malawi and Pakistan Ministry of Health’s approach to preventing wasting (Malawi podcast and Pakistan podcast).

ENN recently published a brief entitled: Best Practice and Prevention of Child Wasting Within the Wider Context of Undernutrition (read here). The brief is based on work since 2014 by the Wasting Stunting Technical Interest Group (WaSt TIG)3 and the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN). It updates previous reports on wasting prevention by ENN and builds on ENN’s recent position paper on wasting.

This week I have been delighted to finally see the publication of my paper reviewing sex differences in undernutrition which forms part of my PhD studies at LSHTM.  I was introduced to the interesting, yet emotive subject of sex differences by my primary PhD supervisor Marko Kerac and have since teamed up with an advisory group full of brilliant people from various disciplines and backgrounds, including a subgroup of ENN’s Wasting and Stunting (WaSt) Technical Interest Group (TIG). 

In this episode ENN Technical Directors Tanya Khara and Carmel Dolan are joined by Martha Mwangome from the Kemri / Wellcome Trust research programme in Kenya and Dr Sophie Moore from King's College London to talk about the Wasting and Stunting Technical Interest Group (WaSt TIG). 

The key question they interrogate is whether the distinction between wasting and stunting is justified or helpful. They use several analyses conducted by the WaSt TIG as a basis for answering this question.