SCN News No 36 - UNSCN

The Symposium papers presented at the 35 th Session include two covering the main findings and recommendations
from the LNS together with three other papers that comment on them and place them in a national and
programmatic context. These five papers are extremely complementary, and I recommend you to read all of them
together, rather than any one of them alone. The presenters of the LNS papers, Mercedes de Onis (p.12) and
Robert Black (p.17), described the enormity of the maternal and child undernutrition problem, as well as the negative
life course consequences in store for those that survive. They also described the evidence base for discreet
interventions that operate at the immediate level of causality and that are proven to work, as well as how or
whether the proven interventions are being implemented "at scale" in countries most affected, and the adequacy of
the international nutrition institutions to guide and facilitate country level implementation. The first contextual
paper, by Marie Ruel (p.21), emphasized the need for multisectoral approaches involving ministries of agriculture
and health, and presented plausibility based evidence of programmatic approaches, operating at the more distal
household and community level of causality, to improve food intake and care dimensions of the nutrition
problematic, and that are needed in addition to the LNS package of interventions. Dr Khan (p.30) presented an
ambitious proposal to accelerate the reduction of stunting in Vietnam that contemplates all of these levels of
causality and proposes to adapt the package of interventions to suit sub-national variations in conditions. The last
contextual paper, by David Pelletier (p.38) looks at the various factors (positive and negative) that have helped
and/or stopped the nutrition agenda from moving forward at the country level, in order to allow effective
programmes to be set up and operate at scale to accelerate the reduction of maternal and child undernutrition. In
Hanoi, many of the SCN Working Groups discussed the implications of the LNS in their respective thematic areas
(p.57). We also publish a commentary by André Briend et al on management of severe acute malnutrition (p. 63).
To celebrate the 30 th Anniversary of the SCN, Alan Berg, one of the founder members of the SCN, was invited to
give the 12 th Dr Abraham Horwitz lecture at the Session in Hanoi (p.44). Alan presented the results of a survey of
nutrition practitioners across the globe, researched through the SCN mailing list. The same questions were used
as those used in a survey Alan did back in the early seventies, the results of which formed the basis of his famous
book entitled the "Nutrition Factor" (Berg 1973). Comparing the results of the two surveys across the thirty years of
the SCN's existence provided some interesting and encouraging findings, which Alan presented at the end of the
Session Symposium. Taking advantage of the occasion the SCN presented Awards of Honour to Alan Berg and to
Michael Latham in recognition of their life time contributions to international nutrition. Awards were also presented
to Professors Khoi and Tsai, the founding fathers of nutrition science in Vietnam, both for their remarkable life time
contributions to nutrition science, which have undoubtedly laid the foundation for the remarkable progress towards
the MDGs that Vietnam has made (SCN 2008a, 2008b).
The overall balance of results achieved at the 35 th Session is a remarkably positive one. The recommendations from
the Session are potentially very useful for practitioners at the country level that have the hardest task i.e that of putting
nutrition science into practice as successful programmes acting at scale. There were some low points in the
Session proceedings however, with the usual tensions surfacing that seem to mark discussions among the practitiowww.unsystem.org/scn
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Secretary’s Round-Up
This edition of the SCN News is of special relevance for a variety of reasons, not least of which being the
recommendations agreed at the 35 th Session (p.51) held in Hanoi in March 2008, hosted by the Government of
Vietnam (SCN 2008a). The 35 th Session was aimed at understanding how to accelerate the reduction of maternal
and child undernutrition, drawing on the recently launched Lancet Nutrition Series (LNS) on maternal and child
undernutrition (Maternal and Child Undernutrition Study Group 2008). The papers presented in Hanoi are featured
here, together with the recommendations concerning actions needed to accelerate the reduction of maternal and
child undernutrition. The recommendations draw on the presentations and discussions in the Symposium, as well
the inputs of the SCN Working Groups, also included in this edition (p.57), and have been further elaborated on and
agreed to by all three constituencies of the SCN. The recommendations have become of even greater relevance
because of the soaring food prices crisis, that broke almost immediately after the 35 th Session had finished.
In their welcoming speeches at the opening of the Session the SCN Chair Ann M. Veneman (p.4) and the Standing
Deputy Minister of Vietnam H.E. Nguyen Sinh Hung (p.7) recognized the multisectoral nature of malnutrition and
emphasized the urgency to address the high rates with multiple strategies. In his keynote speech, the Minister of
Social Development and Fight against Hunger of Brazil Patrus Ananias further emphasized a rights-based approach
and shared experiences of the "Zero Hunger" programme from Brazil (p.8).
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