A momentous month for nutrition

Looking back on a momentous month for nutrition, World Vision Kenya’s National Nutrition Coordinator Rose Ndolo shares her thoughts on Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) events that took place in Washington DC in June - organised by Bread for the World and Save the Children alongside World Vision’s US office and other Civil Society Organisations (CSO).

It was amazing how the Washington DC events fitted in so well with an intense month of activity within the development sector on nutrition, the DC events themselves followed closely behind the nutrition for growth summit held in London.

At these meetings, “Sustaining Political Commitments to Scaling up Nutrition” there was a high level of support from different organisations, government, donor, CSO, UN, business and science who effortlessly participated in the separate but related events in the UK and US.

June took on this intense focus on nutrition in part because of the 2013 Lancet series launch which, due to unacceptable findings that were revealed helped elevate momentum to new levels. The series revealed that under nutrition is the underlying cause of 45% of all under five child deaths  (3.1 million deaths.) Further revelations stated that 165 million children are currently stunted globally and the very sad news that needs attention that the prevalence of chronic under nutrition is decreasing slowly especially in Sub- Sahara Africa.

At the panel discussions that took place throughout the day was a revelation of the great strides that have been made in aligning to the global SUN movement.

The events also provided the opportunity for many civil society actors to come together to take stock and share experiences on how far they had come since joining the global SUN movement. Participation of CSO representatives from Africa, Asia and South America SUN countries were the highlight of the events and not only provided an opportunity for talking about achievements so far, but also enabled the cross-sharing of experiences across countries.

One of the key messages from World Vision was that with the efforts to scale up nutrition, fragile and conflict affected states should not be neglected because they are not helpless. Moreover these countries have stunting levels higher by over 50% than more stable countries.

Refreshing progress but gaps still remain

The second day saw a refreshing moment for members to input into the global CSO network based on country level experiences. Key amongst the inputs were that there has been tremendous efforts in raising the profile of nutrition at national levels.

SUN countries have also developed costed nutrition action plans with different CSO and government networks in place to support the scaling up.

However there are some gaps and among the things that remain critical to pursue further are;

• Financing for the national action plans both from domestic and donor resources. There is eagerness from different actors to support the national plans but that must now be translated resources been availed for the action
• Getting the multi- sectoral coordination right so as to scale up nutrition sensitive interventions. The 2013 lancet series on maternal and child nutrition documented that nutrition specific interventions and programmes in agriculture, social safety nets, early child development and education have enormous potential to enhance the scale and effectiveness of nutrition specific interventions while improving nutrition can also help nutrition- sensitive programmes achieve their own goals
• There is need to recognize that nutrition is a political agenda and therefore CSOs and other actors must work towards penetrating the political circles with clear messages on nutrition. Amidst all the competing national and donor priorities it must remain clear that nutrition plays a central role in development
• At a Congressional briefing on one of the sunny afternoons it was clear that there is need to engage more on sharing experiences of what works with policy makers so as to shape the direction of nutrition scale up. One of my take home messages was that CSOs have a critical role to provide evidence of interventions that work can be scale up at community level and within the health systems.

Reflecting back on these events I can safely say that they have helped reenergise me to join with other partners in my country to explore more innovative ways to scale up nutrition in Kenya.