Menu ENN Search

Maternal nutrition in emergencies: Summary of the state of play and key gaps

Tanya Khara and Emily Mates, ENN

Available at www.ennonline.net

Current evidence underlines the importance of the nutritional status of women at the time of conception, during pregnancy and through lactation as a crucial factor in the survival, healthy growth and development of her children. Although it is the subject of less global attention, maternal nutrition is also crucial for women’s own ability to live a healthy life.

Concerned that there are a number of gaps at policy and practice levels and limited guidance is available to efficiently and effectively address the needs for maternal nutrition, the European Commission commissioned a review of the literature and existing guidance.

This review summarises the available literature relating to women’s vulnerabilities, the implications of these for women and their infants, current international guidance on maternal nutrition and what is currently being done in emergency programming. Key gaps are highlighted.

Current guidance on maternal malnutrition has been limited until recently, with the publication of the World Health Assembly of a 2012 WHO report ‘Nutrition of women during pregnancy’ and the publishing of the WHO 2013 Essential Nutrition Actions for improving maternal, newborn, infant and young child health and nutrition. The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Framework includes a number of direct interventions for maternal nutrition, although the emergency context is not specifically addressed. The SPHERE project 2011 gives some guidance, however most are linked to infant feeding and the welfare of the child only.

The review pulls together available guidance on macronutrient supplementation, micronutrient supplementation, care and support, health related interventions, and nutrition sensitive interventions for improving maternal nutrition generally and in emergencies.

Key gaps identified include:

More like this

FEX: Maternal Nutrition in Emergencies: technical review and round table discussion

By Emily Mates and Tanya Khara Emily Mates is a Technical Director with the ENN. Tanya Khara worked as an ENN consultant on the project. Through the INSPIRE consortium, the...

Maternal Nutrition in Emergencies

Date: 12th November 2013 Venue: Brussels Funders: ECHO Facilitators: The ENN and organised by Inspire Consortium ENN Project Lead: Emily Mates and Tanya Khara (ENN...

Review of maternal nutrition in emergencies

Donor: ECHO Collaborators: ECHO, The ENN, Inspire Consortium ENN Project Lead: Emily Mates Timeframe: 2013 Background Current evidence underlines the importance of the...

FEX: Women’s nutrition

View this article as a pdf Philip T. James, Stephanie V. Wrottesley, Natasha Lelijveld, Eilise Brennan, Bridget Fenn, Rachael Menezes and Emily Mates. (2022). Women's...

Resource: Women's nutrition: A summary of evidence, policy and practice including adolescent and maternal life stages

Please scroll down for links to download the Executive Summary (also available in French) and full report Lisez cet document d'information technique en français ici...

FEX: Improving maternal nutrition in South Asia: Implications for child wasting prevention efforts

View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici By Zivai Murira and Harriet Torlesse Zivai Murira is Nutrition Specialist at United Nations Children's...

FEX: The missing focus on women’s health in the ‘First 1,000 days’ approach to nutrition

View this article as a pdf Research snapshot1 The First 1,000 Days approach emphasises the time between conception and a child's second birthday as a critical period where...

FEX: The current state of evidence and thinking on wasting prevention

Summary of research1 Background ENN produced a report, through the MQSUN+ programme, that synthesises existing evidence and stakeholder opinion on what works to prevent...

FEX: Improving maternal nutrition in South Asia: Implications for child wasting prevention efforts

This is a summary of a Field Exchange 'views' article that was included in issue 63 - a special edition on child wasting in South Asia. The original article was authored by...

FEX: Preconception and periconception interventions to prevent adverse birth outcomes

View this article as a pdf This is a summary of the following paper: Partap U, Chowdhury R, Taneja S et al (2022) Preconception and periconception interventions to prevent low...

FEX: Effects of nutrition interventions during pregnancy on low birth weight

Summary of research1 Location: Global What we know: Low birth weight (LBW) is a major underlying cause of infant mortality and childhood morbidity; LBW is greatly affected by...

en-net: Maternal nutrition

What interventions are available for maternal Nutrition A life cycle approach would be preferable that can break the inter-generation of malnutrition. As you may know...

FEX: Effectiveness of programme approaches to improve the coverage of maternal nutrition interventions in South Asia

View this article as a pdf Summary of research1 The nutritional status of women before and during pregnancy and after delivery has far-reaching consequences for maternal...

Delivering care to address a double burden of maternal malnutrition in Sri Lanka

View this article as a pdf Dr Irosha Nilaweera is a Consultant Community Physician for the National Programme for Maternal Care, Family Health Bureau, Ministry of Health, Sri...

Unlocking the power of maternal nutrition to improve nutritional care of women in South Asia

Unlocking the power of maternal nutrition to improve nutritional care of women in South Asia View this article as a pdf Zivai Murira is the Nutrition Specialist at UNICEF...

Addressing maternal nutrition service delivery gaps in Afghanistan: Policy and programming opportunities

View this article as a pdf Dr Zakia Maroof is a Nutrition Specialist working with UNICEF Afghanistan. Dr Homayoun Ludin is an Afghan doctor working with the Ministry of...

FEX: Summary of Lancet Series on Maternal and Child Undernutrition

Below are short summaries of the recently launched Lancet series of papers on Maternal and Child Undernutrition1. This high profile series focuses on the disease burden...

FEX: Literature review on impact of cash transfers on nutritional outcomes

By Bridget Fenn and Ellyn Yakowenko Bridget Fenn is an epidemiologist with a background in nutrition. She is currently a consultant for the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN)...

Blog post: 2023: What's ahead for ENN

A critical year - Nigel Tricks "It's 2023, and we have 7 years left to end all forms of malnutrition, 'including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed...

Resources

Global guidance WHO (2016) WHO recommendations on antenatal care for a positive pregnancy...

Close

Reference this page

Tanya Khara and Emily Mates (). Maternal nutrition in emergencies: Summary of the state of play and key gaps. Nutrition Exchange 4, July 2014. p30. www.ennonline.net/nex/4/en/gaps

(ENN_4460)

Close

Download to a citation manager

The below files can be imported into your preferred reference management tool, most tools will allow you to manually import the RIS file. Endnote may required a specific filter file to be used.