Nutrition Information Resources

The Global Monitoring Report 2012 ‘Food Prices, Nutrition, and the Millennium Development Goals', is a joint World Bank-IMF publication.   The Report was launched on Tuesday, 24 April 2012.

Please note that the report can be downloaded free of charge on the World Bank's website www.worldbank.org/gmr2012.

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Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives.

The Foundation's nutrition team recently launched a five-part video series on nutrition, highlighting key nutrients - vitamin A, zinc and iron. The short videos highlight the complexity of nutrition but the rigorous approach taken by the scientific community to define the importance of micronutrients, particularly in the health, growth and development of children.

It's a great new resource for policy makers, practitioners and researchers in the field of nutrition, child health and development, and maternal health, and even mothers who want to give their children healthier meals.

To watch the videos click below:

Introduction
Iron
Zinc
Vitamin A
Conclusion

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FAO has released its 2012 Statistical Yearbook. 

To have a look, please click here.

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One hundred and three participants from 48 organizations attended the NACS SOTA meeting Feb 22-23, 2012 including representatives of NACS programs in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda and Zambia. CORE Group's HIV/AIDS and Nutrition Working Groups collaborated with the USAID funded Title II TOPS Program to explore nutrition mechanisms that reach across sectoral boundaries and enable programmatic integration for HIV, health and nutrition.

The SOTA meeting provided an overview of current thinking and predominant issues surrounding the design, implementation and evaluation of NACS programming. Tapping into a carefully selected team of academic and programmatic experts, the event covered a range of emerging science, technical content and program experience, as well as providing a venue for in-depth information exchange.

The SOTA meeting applied a range of formats, including plenary discussions, power point presentations, panel discussions, interviews with experts using a talk-show format, and working group sessions in smaller group. The meeting ended with general conclusions and clarifying statements regarding what NACS is and how it fits into the big picture of health and nutrition programming on a global basis.

To view the full list of videos from the meeting, click here.

To view the full list of presentations from the meeting, click here.

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The Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN) has recently launched a new publication, called Field Exchange Digest (FEX D). This is an annual, digested read of ENN's flagship Field Exchange (FEX) that aims to reach a national audience.

FEX D is for practitioners working in nutrition and food security at national level with an emphasis on preparedness, emergency response, recovery and longer-term programmes. FEX D contains field articles from many different countries and contexts and up to date news about important things happening in the nutrition and food security sectors, including new guidelines, tools and training that may be relevant to you.

The next issue of FEX D will be available in English in May 2012. French and Arabic versions will be available soon after. Future issues will also be available in Spanish.

Readers will be asked to write articles about the nutrition programmes they are working on and to contribute news from their country and region. 

 To receive this publication free of charge, please click here to subscribe, or email office@ennonline.net.

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The European Court of Auditors recently finalised and adopted its performance audit report on the effectiveness of EU development aid for food security in sub-Saharan Africa.

This report was published on Wednesday 28 March 2012 and is available in all EU official languages on the Court's website: www.eca.europa.eu.

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Water will be the primary medium through which climate change will have an impact on their livelihoods, argues Freshwater, climate change and adaptation in the Ganges River Basin, by Heather Hosterman, Peter McCornick, Elizabeth Kistin, Bharat Sharma and Luna Bharati. Management of water must therefore be at the forefront of adaptation.

Water use in agriculture is startling. Globally, irrigated farming accounts for about 68% of water abstraction and 93% of consumption (PDF) - domestic and industrial end-uses make up the remaining 7%. The Ganges basin is at the higher end of such statistics: agriculture accounts for 96% of withdrawals in Bangladesh and Nepal, and 86% in India. But water supplies must also be managed for other, sometimes competing, uses. Hosterman and co-authors consider the likely impacts of climate change, and arising implications for adaptation policy, across the interconnected sectors of agriculture, energy and ecosystems.

Comments about this article, then please click here.

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The Infant & Young Child Nutrition (IYCN) Project's Final Report "Our global efforts to prevent malnutrition during the first 1,000 days" has been released.

The report summarizes the IYCN Project's accomplishments and offers recommendations for building on IYCN's maternal, infant, and young child nutrition programming that spanned 16 countries over the past five years.

By focusing on prevention of malnutrition during the critical 1,000 days from pregnancy through a child's second birthday, involving communities in improved nutrition, and strengthening health systems, IYCN aimed to improve the nutritional status of mothers and children and to increase children's chances of surviving free of HIV.

These activities resulted in the following achievements:

- Built an enabling environment for improved nutrition
- Strengthened social and behavior change communication programming
- Enhanced complementary feeding programs
- Increased HIV-free survival for the next generation
- Brought women's and children's nutrition to the forefront of agriculture
- Strengthened health systems for healthier mothers and children

For the full report, please click here.

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By UNICEF (2012)

This year's report focuses attention on the needs of children in urban areas.

One billion children live in urban areas, a number that is growing rapidly. Disparities within cities reveal that many children lack access to schools, health care and sanitation, despite living alongside these services.

For further information, please click below.

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By Save The Children (2012)

This report analyses the causes of malnutrition, focusing on chronic malnutrition and stunting in children. It identifies solutions that are proven to be effective in terms of direct interventions and indirect interventions.

For more information click below.

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By Schmitz J, West KP, Khatry SK, Wu L, LeClerq SC, Karna S, Katz J, Sommer A, Pillion J. In BMJ (2012)

This randomised trial cohort follow-up study shows that Vitamin A supplementation during childhood may reduce the risk of hearing loss as young adults.

For more information click below.

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By World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean (2011)

WHO Regional Office for Eastern Mediterranean released its regional strategy and action plan for 2010-2019. The overall goal of the nutrition strategy for the Eastern Mediterranean Region is to improve the nutritional status of people throughout the lifecycle through encouraging countries to reposition nutrition as central to their development agenda.

For more information click below.

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By Michel Pimbert (2012)

This paper highlights research into sustaining local food systems, biodiversity and livelihoods. It showcases how farming communities are taking the lead in action research to revive diverse, locally controlled food systems.

For more information click below.

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By Michel Pimbert (2012)

This briefing explains how agricultural research is funded, organised, controlled and practised and how it can have a huge impact on small-scale producers in the global South.

For more information click below.

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An IFPRI 2020 Book. Edited by Shenggen Fan and Rajul Pandya-Lorch (2012)

The fundamental purpose of agriculture is not just to produce food and raw materials, but to have healthy, well-nourished people. One of the sector's most important tasks then is to provide food of sufficient quantity and quality to feed and nourish the world's population sustainably so that all people can lead healthy, productive lives. Achieving this goal will require closer collaboration across the sectors of agriculture, nutrition, and health, which have long operated in separate spheres with little recognition of how their actions affect each other.

The full book will be available in February 2012. Meanwhile, a preview chapter from Reshaping Agriculture for Nutrition and Health has been released.

For more information click below.

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The Landscape Analysis of readiness to accelerate action in nutrition is a systematic approach to assessing where to invest and how to best invest to accelerate action in nutrition. It has the following three components:

• Desk analysis of country readiness - This involves comprehensive analysis of secondary-data indicators in 36 countries with a high burden of stunting (these countries were the initial focus of the analysis). The desk analysis uses multiple statistical methods to define country typologies of readiness which was defined by "commitment ̶ willingness to act" and "capacity ̶ ability to act". For the desk review, commitment was measured by "nutrition governance" indicator which was formulated by WHO using key elements required in countries for the processes by which policies and programmes are developed and implemented to achieve nutrition security, and capacity was measured using proxy measure of health care capacity.
• In-depth country assessments - To date, country assessments had been carried out in 18 countries: Burkina Faso, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Peru, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Timor-Leste.
• Nutrition landscape information system (NLIS) (http://www.who.int/nutrition/nlis/).

The tool package of the Landscape Analysis country assessment provides guidance on "how to":

• plan a country assessment
• adapt tools for respective country context
• undertake preliminary desk review (including stakeholder mapping)
• conduct interviews and collect information
• analyse data using the analytical framework which provides indicators for assessing readiness as function of commitment and capacity to scale-up nutrition action
• organise a country stakeholders' consensus meeting

To access the full document, available in English and French, please click here.  For more information, please click here. 

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IFPRI launches the 2011 Global Food Policy Report, a new annual publication that provides a comprehensive, research-based analysis of major food policy challenges at the global, regional, national, and local levels.

The report highlights important developments and events in food policy that occurred in 2011, discusses lessons learned, offers policy recommendations, presents IFPRI's food policy tools and indicators, and takes a look forward into 2012.

To read the report online, please click here.

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 The Copenhagen Consensus 2012 results are available!
In 2012, the Copenhagen Consensus Center's flagship project Copenhagen Consensus 2012 provides an answer to the question:

If we had an extra $75 billion to put to good use, which problems would we solve first?

The project, a culmination of 18 months of planning, research-writing and preparation, builds on the success of two past Copenhagen Consensus projects: Copenhagen Consensus 2004 and Copenhagen Consensus 2008.

The Copenhagen Consensus 2012 Expert Panel finds that fighting malnourishment should be the top priority for policy-makers and philantropists.

Read more by clicking below.

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The 2012 edition of the Mediterra report takes the mobilising potential of the Mediterranean Diet as a basis and proposes a multidimensional itinerary involving sociodemographics, health, ecology, enterprise, geo-economics and citizens' initiative.

Produced by CIHEAM (The International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies of Montpellier), the Report was launched at a Press Conference organized in Paris on 7 March 2012.

The report is available in English and French and can be downloaded free of charge.

Click below for more information.

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Action Against Hunger has just released a new report, Aid for Nutrition, which provides donors, aid recipients and other stakeholders with a detailed analysis of current spending on nutrition and of the adequacy of current aid reporting systems. It also provides recommendations on what can be done to scale up the response to undernutrition effectively.

Investments in nutrition are currently inadequate with the majority of funding going towards direct nutrition interventions in response to humanitarian crises, reflecting the short term nature of aid for nutrition. Furthermore, nutrition aid is not always directed to countries with the highest burdens of undernutrition, many donors fail to honour all commitments, and poor donor reporting practices have hindered transparency and accountability. Based on their findings, Action Against Hunger recommends that donors must commit to aid transparency principles by improving reporting practices, that donors and governments increase their investments in direct or nutrition specific interventions, that the treatment and prevention of undernutrition be also targeted in non-emergency situations, and that an annual review of investments in nutrition be done to keep the paucity of funding for nutrition high on the political agenda.

To read the report, please click here. To consult the Action Against Hunger website, please click here.

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The UNSCN is part of the steering group of this Forum, an information sharing mechanism which aims to bring together resources and initiatives related to the management of acute malnutrition. Please follow this link to become a member and access key resources on Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition: http://www.cmamforum.org/

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8 August 2012, Rome - Immediate action to promote sustainable diets and food biodiversity so as to improve the health of humans and of the planet is urged in a book just published by FAO and Bioversity International.  Access the press release here.

In "Sustainable Diets and Biodiversity", prominent scientists, policy makers and practitioners discuss the linkages between agriculture, health, the environment and food industries. This groundbreaking publication explores the concepts of sustainable diets and how they relate to the production and consumption of the food we eat. Sustainable diets are foreseen as an important element for a shift towards sustainable development and a green economy and there is an urgent need to develop and promote strategies that emphasize the positive role of food biodiversity in human nutrition and poverty alleviation. 

To access the publication please click here.

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Nutrition has increasingly been recognized as a basic pillar for social and economic development. For the accountability of nutrition related global movements, a monitoring progress towards agreed upon international targets is essential.

This publication presents the results of the harmonization effort and reports, for the first time, joint UNICEF-WHO-World Bank prevalence and number estimates of child malnutrition for 2011 and trends since 1990. Estimates for the four anthropometric indicators are presented by United Nations, Millennium Development Goal, UNICEF, WHO regional and The World Bank income group classifications.

To read the publication, please click below.

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 A new book has been published within the IAEA Human Health Series: "Assessment of iron bioavailability in humans using stable iron isotope techniques".

To read the Publication please click below.

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Researchers from Gent University and the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp have assessed the effect of specialised energy dense food supplements in the framework of a general food distribution on the prevention of acute child malnutrition. This did not result in the expected outcome: children receiving the supplements were growing a little bit more in length, reported less episodes of diarrhoea and fever, and were less like to be anaemic. However, compared to children that received only the food rations, supplemented children did not gain more weight and had an equal risk to be become undernourished.

For further information, please click below. To read the publication, please click here.

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Save the Children and World Vision presented their ‘Nutrition Barometer' during a panel discussion on stunting in children on 26 September, in New York. For the presentation of the Nutrition Barometer, an interesting panel was invited to provide comments, including Ertharin Cousins (Executive Director, WFP), David Nabarro (UN SG Special Representative for Food Security and Nutrition), Brendan Rogers (Director General, Irish Aid), and 2 panel members from Indonesia and Kenya. The discussion was moderated by Jasmine Whitbread (CEO, Save the Children).
 
The Barometer provides a snapshot of national governments' commitment to addressing children's nutrition. It measures governments' political and legal commitment as well as their financial commitment.
The document can be downloaded here.
 
WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin, who was on the panel, took the opportunity to present her vision of the UN network's role in supporting national and global efforts to reduce undernutrition. Ms Cousins mentioned that "nutrition is not health or agriculture, but that it is both. We don't have the luxury of focusing on one sector; we have the obligation to deal with all."  Ms Cousins further added that the UN has the Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) at the global level and REACH at the country level to support countries who are in the lead.

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"Economic growth is necessary but not sufficient to accelerate reduction of hunger and malnutrition". This is the new key message of the FAO "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 ".

The State of Food Insecurity in the World raises awareness about global hunger issues, discusses underlying causes of hunger and malnutrition and monitors progress towards hunger reduction targets established at the 1996 World Food Summit and the Millennium Summit. The publication is targeted at a wide audience, including policy-makers, international organizations, academic institutions and the general public with a general interest in linkages between food security, and human and economic development.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 is published jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme.

For more information, please contact: mailto:sofi@fao.org or visit the website.

You can download the report by clicking here.

For more details on the The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012, please click on the link below

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Interesting compilation of articles on hunger and malnutrition, spanning the last 30 years from  Michael Lipton, Margaret Buchanan-Smith, Mona Sharma, Paul Howe, Jeremy Swift, Richard Longhurst, Simon Maxwell, Ian Scoones, Stephen Devereux, John Thompson, Biraj Swain, Geoff Tansey and Harsh Mander and others.

All the articles in this IDS publication are available online and free of charge.

To download click here.

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The State of Food and Agriculture, FAO's major annual flagship publication, aims at bringing to a wider audience balanced science-based assessments of important issues in the field of food and agriculture. Each edition of the report contains a comprehensive, yet easily accessible, overview of a selected topic of major relevance for rural and agricultural development and for global food security. This is supplemented by a synthetic overview of the current global agricultural situation.

For more information, please contact Terri Raney or visit the website.

The publication can be downloaded here.

For more details on The State of Food and Agriculture 2012, please click on the link below

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