Delivery platforms for sustained nutrition in Ethiopia

Abstract

The revised national nutrition programme spanning 2013-15 will address these challenges by emphasising the first 1000 days of life with a focus on children younger than 2 years pregnant and lactating women and adolescent girls to break the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition. Furthermore the revised programme will emphasise actions for acceleration of stunting reduction by focusing on nutrition-sensitive interventions in other development sectors such as education agriculture social protection and women’s affairs and civil society organisations and the private sector. The role of health extension workers and the health development army will continue to be central to achievement of equitable access of all vulnerable women and children to both curative and preventive services and to ensure that targets specified in the health sector development plan IV of Ethiopia are met. Ethiopia’s actions have enabled development workers to engage people at risk in an integrated manner using a unified Health Extension Programme enabling achievement of great gains in child survival and nutrition. The Government of Ethiopia on the basis of experiences in the past 10 years of this programme and the substantial improvements in nutritional status believes that even greater efforts can be made to reduce stunting. The government will continue to optimise the revised national nutrition programme and the global efforts on nutrition such as Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) and Renewed Efforts Against Child Hunger (REACH) which are mechanisms to catalyse further multisectoral nutrition-sensitive actions beyond the health sector. Nutrition as one of many crucial indicators of health status should be used for close programmatic linkages and synergies between targeted social protection interventions. These synergistic actions across social services will contribute towards increased resource allocation for the national nutrition programme and ensure that sustainable interventions are scaled up to improve food and nutrition security. (Excerpt)