Menu ENN Search

Editorial

View this article as a pdf

Welcome to the second issue of Nutrition Exchange (NEX) South Asia. The South Asia region continues to bear the highest burden of child malnutrition in the world with implications on global progress. As with the first issue, this NEX follows on from a regional conference, convened by SAARC (the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) on ‘Stop Stunting: Improving Young Children’s Diets in South Asia’ in 2019 in Nepal. Poor complementary feeding practices are associated with high rates of child malnutrition in the South Asia region and it is vital therefore to understand and share learning on how related national policies and programmes are being designed and implemented and share the lessons learned.  

Through a partnership with UNICEF’s Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA), we have worked closely with a range of authors to support the development of nine articles from six countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan – as well as an overview from UNICEF ROSA and a regional perspective on tackling the double burden of malnutrition. In keeping with the ethos of NEX, we prioritise the ‘voice’ of national government actors as the primary authors, along with their development partners. 

Each country is a unique context and these articles provide important insights into how the diets of young children are assessed, understood and addressed across diverse settings. Improving complementary feeding is not straightforward and requires taking into account an array of underlying drivers that can reduce availability of and access to adequate and quality diets, including low socio-economic status, food insecurity, and perceptions of appropriate foods and feeding practices. It also needs the enabling policy, programme and financing environment to be effectively mobilised. A standout feature of the South Asia region is how well countries have done in increasing and maintaining high rates of breastfeeding. An enduring challenge is protecting children in the 6-23 months age range from the negative impacts of poor diets on their growth and development.  

As we started work on this edition, the Covid-19 pandemic emerged and exposed the fragilities and inequities in the global and local food systems. As outlined in the overview by the UNICEF regional team, the pandemic is affecting the lives and livelihoods of people across the region. Food-price increases and disruption of key services will add to the challenges already faced by households in feeding their young children. Improving young children’s diets is even more critical to prevent already high levels of child malnutrition from increasing further. 

As highlighted 2019 SAARC/UNICEF conference, it is important for multiple actors across different systems to act in tandem to improve young children’s diets; particularly those engaged in food and health systems; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); and social protection. The articles in this issue of NEX South Asia cover all these areas and their impact on complementary feeding.  

Food systems lie at the heart of the solution to improving young children’s diets. From Nepal we learn about promoting homestead food production as a means to help year-round consumption of fresh foods as a key approach to increasing the diversity and quality of diets in a large, multi-sector programme. From Punjab province in Pakistan comes new evidence on the role of cost of diets, food access and perceptions in shaping a multi-sector communications strategy for infant and young child feeding. Health systems provide a key delivery vehicle for different approaches to address complementary feeding. In Bhutan a home-fortification approach aims to reduce high levels of anaemia, while in Bihar state in India a home-based care approach is building the capacity of frontline workers. In Afghanistan a focus on complementary feeding is part of a community-based nutrition programme being scaled up across the country. Other sectors are involved, too: again from Pakistan, an article from Sindh province describes sub-national ownership of a programme linking WASH and nutrition to improved diets and care/feeding practices. In articles from Bangladesh and Nepal the focus is on the role of cash-based social protection systems in supporting affordable and diverse diets among poor and vulnerable families. And another article from India provides rich insights into the integration of complementary food supplements at scale in the country’s national nutrition programme. Finally, in conversation with regional nutrition advisors from the World Health Organization (WHO), we ask what policy shifts will be needed to tackle the double burden of malnutrition in the region, given rising rates of child overweight. 

Looking at the rich learnings from these diverse countries reveals a strong thread running through these articles: the importance of context-specific understanding of the perceptions and realities for families and communities; the need to harness multiple systems and assess, plan and work jointly; and the need for recognition of innovations and adaptations to policy and programmes to overcome blockages along the way. Frontline workers, be they from the agriculture, health, social protection or WASH sectors or from traditional community structures, are vital contact points for families as they nurture their young children and strive to feed them nutritious and diverse foods. 

It has been our privilege to work on NEX Asia 2 and we remain passionate about the importance of hearing the voices of national and sub-national government actors and their partners as they share their learning about what works well and what challenges they need to overcome in nutrition programming and policy. 

 

Carmel Dolan, Co-editor, NEX
Judith Hodge, Co-editor, NEX

More like this

FEX: Nutrition Exchange South Asia issues on maternal nutrition and complementary feeding

View this article as a pdf Nutrition Exchange (NEX)1 recently developed two regionally focused editions exploring maternal nutrition and improving young children's diets in...

FEX: Regional Perspective: South Asia

Zivai Murira is the Regional Advisor for Nutrition at the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA), Kathmandu, Nepal All forms of malnutrition - stunting, wasting and...

Resources

View this article as a pdf Global guidance WHO & UNICEF (2003). Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding. Geneva: World Health Organization and United Nations...

FEX: Nutrition Exchange (NEX) South Asia: Maternal nutrition

View this article as a pdf In its first-ever regional issue, Nutrition Exchange has partnered with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Regional Office of South Asia...

Leveraging the power of multiple systems to improve diets and feeding practices in early life in South Asia

View this article as a pdf Zivai Murira is the Nutrition Specialist at UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia, based in Kathmandu, Nepal. Harriet Torlesse is the Regional...

FEX: Regional Perspective: Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA)

Charity Zvandaziva is a Regional Nutrition Specialist for UNICEF ESA Regional Office (ESARO) Chloe Angood is a Knowledge Management Consultant working for UNICEF...

The double burden of malnutrition among young children in South Asia: Policy and programme options

View this article as a pdf Dr Angela de Silva is the Regional Adviser, Nutrition and Health for Development, WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia. Dr Ayoub Al Jawalhdeh...

Blog post: Some reflections on NEX South Asia

Reflections on the latest Nutrition Exchange South Asia edition on improving young children's diets. Recently I was asked to provide a summary of the two South East Asia...

FEX: Higher heights: a greater ambition for maternal and child nutrition in South Asia

Research Summary 1 Poor nutrition in early life threatens the growth and development of children, which has a knock-on effect on the sustainable development of nations. This...

NEX: Editorial

This seventh issue of Nutrition Exchange introduces an exciting new phase in the publication's development, as ENN will now be publishing NEX twice a year and will bring...

FEX: Complementary Feeding in Emergencies Special Section

Global crises are having a severely detrimental impact on the diets of young children, making this featured special section on complementary feeding in fragile and emergency...

FEX: Report of the South Asia ‘Stop stunting: Improving Young Children’s Diets’ conference

View this article as a pdf Report summary1 The third regional conference on stunting hosted by the Secretariat of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)...

FEX: ENN update

View this article as a pdf Field Exchange Special issue on wasting in South Asia Asia is home to half of the world's wasted children (25.9 million) and severely wasted...

NEX: Editorial

View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici In November 2019, over one hundred countries came together in Katmandu, Nepal as part of the SUN Movement...

FEX: South Asia and child wasting – unravelling the conundrum

View this article as a pdf Lisez cet article en français ici By Harriet Torlesse and Minh Tram Le Background Each annual release of the Joint Malnutrition Estimates...

FEX: Regional Perspective: Europe and Central Asia (ECA)

This article presents a summary of the findings of the ECA Regional Office (ECARO) landscape analysis report (UNICEF, 2020), drafted by the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN)...

FEX: Regional Perspective: Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Aashima Garg is a Regional Nutrition Advisor at the UNICEF MENA Regional Office (MENARO), Amman Wigdan Madani is a Regional Nutrition Specialist at UNICEF MENARO, Amman High...

NEX South Asia Editorial

Nutrition Exchange (NEX) is a long-standing ENN publication that captures the different experiences of countries in preventing and treating malnutrition. The focus of NEX has...

FEX: Conducting situation analysis as a first step to improve young children’s diets: examples from Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe

Lisez cet article en français ici Key messages: Context analysis is a crucial step in understanding the particular gaps faced by caregivers in providing young children...

FEX: Aiming higher for maternal and child nutrition in South Asia

View this article as a pdf Research snapshot1 South Asia has the greatest burden of wasted and stunted children of any region in the world. These children are more likely to...

Close

Reference this page

ENN (). Editorial. Nutrition Exchange Asia 2, June 2020. p2. www.ennonline.net/nex/southasia/2/editorial

(ENN_6692)

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.