In this issue: Policies for IYCN in Vietnam, reframing undernutrition, food insecurity in Nairobi, Ghanaian weaning foods |
| NutritionThe causes and consequences of malnutrition, nutrition specific interventions, nutrition sensitive interventions, and the political economy of undernutrition. |
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| Eldis Nutrition and Development Reporter5 November 2014
http://www.eldis.org/nutrition/
This is our regular bulletin that highlights recent publications on nutrition and development issues. The documents are available without charge on the web. If you are unable to access any of these materials online and would like to receive a copy of a document as an email attachment, please contact our editor at the email address given below.
- The power of policies to protect, support and promote infant and young child nutrition: From Viet Nam to Southeast Asia
- Reframing undernutrition: faecally-transmitted infections and the 5 As
- Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in Urban Slums: Experiences from-Nairobi, Kenya
- Nutritional enhancement of Ghanaian weaning foods using the orange flesh sweet potato (Ipomea Batatas)
The power of policies to protect, support and promote infant and young child nutrition: From Viet Nam to Southeast Asia
Feature by: Ms. Phan Thi Hong Linh and Ms. Manini Sheker at Alive & Thrive Vietnam
In the summer of 2012, new mothers in Vietnam had a reason to rejoice. On June 18, the Vietnamese National Assembly in Hanoi made a historic decision, with over 90% of its members voting to extend paid maternity leave from four to six months. This was a bold departure from other policies of its kind in the Southeast Asian region. Three days later, Vietnam’s leadership made another unprecedented decision – to expand the ban on advertising breast milk substitutes for infants and young children, from birth to 24 months of age. The decision helped align Vietnam’s law more closely with the International Code of Marketing of Breast milk Substitutes and subsequent World Health Assembly resolutions. In subsequent years, another important policy gain followed – the institutionalization of baby-friendly hospital principles in provinces across the country.
Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/go/latest-news/news/the-power-of-policies-to-protect-support-and-promote-infant-and-young-child-nutrition-from-viet-nam-to-southeast-asia#.VFj5FBb6HBM
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Reframing undernutrition: faecally-transmitted infections and the 5 As
Produced by: Institute of Development Studies UK (2014)
The dominant nutrition discourse concerns access to adequate food and its quality. It now includes food security, food rights and justice, governance and agriculture. Despite many initiatives to assure food access, and growing economies, high levels of undernutrition persist in much of Asia. It is increasingly suggested that much of this ‘Asian enigma’ can now be explained by open defecation (OD) combined with population density. However, the insight that ‘shit stunts’ remains a widespread blind spot. The persistence of this blind spot can in part be explained by factors which are institutional, psychological and professional. Reductionist focus on the diarrhoeas, which are serious, dramatic, visible and measurable, has led to the relative neglect of many other often subclinical and continuously debilitating faecally-transmitted infections (FTIs) including environmental enteropathy (EE), other intestinal infections, and parasites. These are harder to measure but together affect nutrition much more: the diarrhoeas are only the tip of the much larger sub-clinical iceberg. How OD and FTIs, poverty and undernutrition reinforce each other is illustrated in this paper by looking at the case of India, which has about 60 per cent of the OD in the world, around a third of the undernourished children, and approximately a third of the people living in poverty. Through OD, FTIs and in other ways, lack of sanitation leads to losses, which may be estimated, in the range of 1 to 7 per cent of GDP in various countries. To reframe undernutrition for a better balance of understanding and interventions, we propose two inclusive concepts: the FTIs and the 5 As. The first two As – availability and access – are oral, about food intake, while the last three As – absorption, antibodies and allopathogens – are novel categories, anal and internal, about FTIs and what happens inside the body. These concepts have implications for research, professional teaching and training, and policy and practice. While other countries make rapid progress towards becoming open-defecation free, India remains obstinately stuck, making undernutrition in India one of the great human challenges of the twenty first century. The concepts of FTIs and the 5 As reframe more inclusively how undernutrition is perceived, described and analysed. Our hope is that this reframing will contribute however modestly to a cleaner, healthier and happier world in which all children and adults are well-nourished and can grow and live to their full potential. Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?doc=69602
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Vulnerability to Food Insecurity in Urban Slums: Experiences from-Nairobi, Kenya
Authors: E.W,Kimani-Murage; L.,Schofield; S.,Wekesah
Produced by: African Population and Health Research Center, Nairobi, Kenya (2014)
Food and nutrition security is critical for economic development due to the role of nutrition in healthy growth and human capital development. Slum residents, already grossly affected by chronic poverty, are highly vulnerable to different forms of shocks, including those arising from political instability. This study describes the food security situation among slum residents in Nairobi, with specific focus on vulnerability associated with the 2007/2008 postelection crisis in Kenya. The study from which the data is drawn was nested within the Nairobi Urban Health and Demographic Surveillance System (NUHDSS), which follows about 70,000 individuals from close to 30,000 households in two slums in Nairobi, Kenya. The study triangulates data from qualitative and quantitative sources. It uses qualitative data from 10 focus group discussions with community members and 12 key-informant interviews with community opinion leaders conducted in November 2010, and quantitative data involving about 3,000 households randomly sampled from the NUHDSS database in three rounds of data collection between March 2011 and January 2012. Food security was defined using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) criteria. Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?doc=69458
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Nutritional enhancement of Ghanaian weaning foods using the orange flesh sweet potato (Ipomea Batatas)
Authors: E.A,Bonsi; W.A,Plahar; R.,Zabawa
Produced by: African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development (2014)
Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a public health problem in Ghana. Research on the orange flesh sweet potato root has been given prominence because of its high β-carotene content as a means to enhance the nutritive value and vitamin A content of the traditional diets of Ghanaian children as a long-term intervention towards combating VAD. The article concludes that Orange Flesh Sweetpotato (OFS) flour has the potential to be used at 25 per cent replacement level in the soy-fortified roasted maize meal formulation, and OFS is a useful ingredient with the potential to improve the β -carotene or vitamin A content of such formulations. This will help alleviate vitamin A deficiency of children in Ghana and other countries with similar problems. It is ,therefore, recommended that the orange flesh sweet potato flour be used by mothers as an entry point for enhancing the traditional weaning food preparations. Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?doc=69445
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