Nutrition Information Resources

The International Diabetes Federation's Diabetes and Climate Change Report  has been launched at an NCD Alliance ‘Next Generation Living' side-event at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

The Diabetes and Climate Change Report establishes the interconnections between these two urgent global risks. It explores the shared global vectors of rapid urbanisation, changing population trends, and the globalised food system, and establishes the co-benefits of combating diabetes and climate change together. Greater policy alignment in the global response could provide ‘win-win' opportunities to mitigate climate change and risk of type 2 diabetes simultaneously.

The Report serves to strengthen the interface between people, health and the environment at this high level event, which will explore how preventing NCDs is crucial to enable sustainable development for present and future generations. High priority has been accorded to health and NCDs at Rio+20, with governments recognising that health is a precondition of, indicator for and an outcome of sustainable development. We now need to work together to translate this recognition into action and ensure the post-2015 development agenda secures a healthy and sustainable future for all. 

To read the Report, please click here.

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The new Save the Children report "A Chance to Grow" has been released. This report highlights the huge potential that social protection has to tackle malnutrition - a hidden killer that contributes to a third of child deaths.

With the ongoing economic crisis and food prices on the rise, millions of families are already struggling to feed themselves properly. This report shows that if there is an escalation of the eurozone crisis that situation will get even worse, with 33 million people in developing countries pushed into hunger by the end of 2013. Against that backdrop, the report sets out how programmes to distribute cash, food or assets - sometimes in exchange for participation in employment or other activities - have a huge role to play in protecting the poorest families particularly during tough times and economic shocks. Crucially they can also help families vulnerable to malnutrition to access a nutritious and diverse diet for their children, and increase their ability to cope with crises.

To read the report, please click here.

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A new edition of the WHO electronic Library of Evidence for Nutrition Actions has recently been released (www.who.int/elena). This updated version of the site includes new nutrition intervention topics such as: food supplementation for children with moderate acute malnutrition, vitamin D supplementation in infants, multiple micronutrient supplementation in pregnant women, as well as community-based feeding for the promotion of child growth.

In the upcoming months, please continue to check for updates as the eLENA site is currently being translated into the remaining five official WHO languages.  The Spanish site was recently launched during the World Health Assembly in May (www.who.int/elena/es). New guidelines on the management of severe acute malnutrition in children are expected to be released in the upcoming edition of eLENA in August. A new film on the eLENA project and its practical application in a number of settings is also due to be announced in the coming weeks.

The Global database on the Implementation of Nutrition Action (GINA) is a complementary web-based tool where governments and organizations can upload and share information on their nutrition activities. GINA will have a user-friendly interface with interactive maps, lists and fact sheets that show what is being done where, when, with whom, why and how to scale-up and improve nutrition. The database already consists of more than 800 policy titles and 2000 action data, which are currently being verified and updated by countries. In parallel, users continue to upload nutrition action information via the online form at www.who.int/nutrition/gina. All collected data are verified with countries before being published.

You are invited to upload information about your organization's nutrition activities in the GINA data entry form or visit www.who.int/nutrition/gina.

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In the lead up to the upcoming United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development RIO+20, Brazil, on 20-22 June 2012, FAO has released its policy document Towards the future we want - End hunger and make the transition to sustainable agricultural and food systems, which presents FAO's contribution to identifying the challenges and actions needed to build a sustainable future.

Sustainable development cannot be realized unless hunger and malnutrition are eradicated. While the convergence of food security and sustainability cannot wait any longer, the numerous challenges and tradeoffs need coordination and efficient governance systems to be addressed, including the participation of all stakeholders.

To read the document, please click below.

For more information: FAO at Rio+20 webpage

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The European Food Information Resource Network project (EuroFIR) was a Network of Excellence comprising of 48 partners from academia, research organisations and small-and-medium size enterprises in 27 countries. The project was funded by the European Community's Sixth Framework Programme (Priority 5: Food Quality and Safety; Contract no FP6-513944).

One of its main objectives was to develop, for the first time in Europe, a single online platform with up-to-date food composition data across Europe. Another important outcome of EuroFIR was the establishment of a longer-term sustainable platform to continue some of the activities set up during the project and this was achieved by the creation of a non-profit international association, EuroFIR AISBL.  The main aim of the Association is to support and promote the development, management, publication and application of food composition data, through international cooperation and harmonization.

The EuroFIR AISBL Newsletter is published twice a year, providing updates on the latest developments in the Association, the benefits of membership, important forthcoming events and the projects that are being undertaken within EuroFIR AISBL.  The 5th edition of the Newsletter has now been released. 

To read the Newsletter, or previous editions, please click here.

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FAO, Bioversity, INFOODS and the WAHO have released the Food Composition Tables for West Africa 2012.
 
For millions of people, diets are becoming less diverse and of poorer quality. This dietary transition has led to continued under-nutrition and increases in nutrition-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardio-vascular disease. To improve livelihoods, nutrition and health, accessing and consuming diverse quality foods is necessary. We also need to understand the composition and intake of food if we are to have effective policies and programmes.

‘Food Composition Tables for West Africa' is an important step towards understanding what is in the food that people eat - not only in West Africa but elsewhere. It is a joint publication from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), with Bioversity International, The International Network of Food Data Systems (INFOODS) and the West African Health Organization (WAHO). Containing over 472 foods and 28 components along with their nutrient content, the tables are in an easy-to-use, accessible format. Emphasis was given to include data on food biodiversity by incorporating cultivars/varieties and underutilized foods. For these foods, the country of origin of the cultivar/variety was reported, next to the food name.

Published in French and English, the Food Composition Table is also available in a Microsoft Excel format for easy access for analysts.

For the Publication, please click here.
For Excel Spreadsheets, please click here.

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The overall goal of work in the area of micronutrients in the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development within the World Health Organization is to improve the health and development of populations through adequate vitamin and mineral nutrition. This work is carried out in collaboration with other WHO departments, both at Headquarters and in the Regions, WHO Member States and external partners.

To read the draft report of the work carried out during the biennium 2010-2011, please click below.

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The Feinstein International Center has announced a new publication: Milk Matters: The Impact of Dry Season Livestock Support on Milk Supply and Child Nutrition in Somali Region, Ethiopia.

Children in the pastoral areas of Somali Region Ethiopia are increasingly among the most nutritionally vulnerable populations in the world. In response to more frequent droughts and recurrent nutritional emergencies in the Region, the international community has tended to prioritize the provision of food aid and therapeutic treatment of severe acute malnutrition; Little has been done to understand the potential role of milk, a well-established pillar of the pastoral diet and one of the world's most nutritionally complete foods, in maintaining child nutritional status. 

This report presents the findings of two cohort studies assessing the impact of small-scale livestock interventions, designed to sustain access to and availability of animal milk at the household level over the dry season, on the nutritional status of children under 5 years of age. The studies were conducted for one calendar year, July 2010 to July 2011, in two pastoral Zones of the Somali Region. The results reveal that, in sites exposed to the intervention, animal milk off-take improved dramatically, child consumption of animal milk increased, and child nutritional status stabilized compared to that of children in the control sites. Moreover, the direct costs of the livestock interventions were found to be 45 to 75 percent less than those incurred through therapeutic feeding programs, and the benefits were found to extend beyond nutrition to include developmental, health, and livelihoods aspects. The study represents the culmination of four years of investigative research into the role of milk in pastoral child nutrition and a call for new, holistic, and preventative approaches to addressing child malnutrition in pastoral regions.

To read the report, please click here.
 

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Institute of Development Studies:

Analysing Nutrition Governance is a policy research project that looks behind standard nutrition indicators to find out why some countries achieve improved nutrition outcomes while others make insufficient progress. Based on evidence from Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Peru and Zambia, the project aims to inform nutrition policy and advocacy. The project is based at the Institute for Development Studies, UK.

A new policy briefing summarises the key lessons on nutrition governance for those working on nutrition policy and advocacy.

Find out more and download key resources at the Analysing Nutrition Governance website.
 
Contact IDS if you have questions.

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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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 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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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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The Lancet Nutrition Series  are launched on 6^th June 2013 !
Five years after the initial series, The Lancet re-evaluates the problems of maternal and child undernutrition and also examines the growing problems of overweight and obesity for women and children, and their consequences in low-income and middle-income countries.

The Series highlights the availability of proven interventions that could address the persistent burden of malnutrition, presenting the best evidence and latest developments in the field.

Articles, papers and comments can be downloaded here.

For more information, click below.

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Essential Nutrition Actions: Improving maternal, newborn, infant and young child nutrition

WHO has issued a consolidated package of guidance on nutrition targeting the first 1,000 days of life. This publication contains essential nutrition actions (ENA) that policy-makers could implement to reduce infant and child mortality, improve physical and mental growth and development, and improve productivity. The package is divided in 2 parts:

• Part I presents the interventions currently recommended by WHO, their rationale and evidence and describes the actions required to implement them. The document uses a life course approach, from pre-conception throughout the first 2 years of life. 

• Part II analyses the implementation of ENAs in operational large-scale programmes, gives their effectiveness when delivered in an integrated fashion as well as their implications for designing future programmes and sustaining existing ones.

The report can be downloaded here. 

Global nutrition policy review: What does it take to scale up nutrition action?
The Global nutrition policy review analysed policy environment and governance, policy implementation in specific nutrition areas, policy coherence (identification of stakeholders and coordination mechanism) and the implementation of monitoring and evaluation.

The Review is based on a questionnaire survey conducted during 2009-2010, in which 119 WHO Member States and 4 territories participated. Results are presented by regions and complemented by the results of the in-depth country assessments of the Landscape Analysis on Countries' Readiness to Accelerate Action in Nutrition initiated by WHO in 2008. Though the Review identified a number of gaps in the design, content and implementation of these policies and programmes, it appears that much progress has been made since ICN 1992 in the design and implementation of national nutrition policies and plans of action.


The report can be downloaded here

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