SCN News No 36 - UNSCN

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35 TH SCN SESSION RECOMMENDATIONS www.unsystem.org/scn
coordinate the delivery of humanitarian aid in emergency situations. Similar scales for use in non-emergency settings have yet to be developed
however. The Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) website is also a good source of guidance on the measurement
of food security work as used to guide USAID technical assistance to Title II emergency programs and more than 80 development,
nutrition, and food security programs in 27 countries (online).
24. Programme guidance on when and how to provide balanced energy-protein supplements to mothers during pregnancy is not readily
available. The LNS Paper 3 used a cut off of 10% for excessive thinness (i.e. with a BMI less than 18.5) in women of reproductive age,
in order to model the effects of the intervention. Improving maternal nutrition status to improve foetal development is not simply a
question of improving dietary intake however as has been reported by several technical consultations. See WHO (2003) Promoting optimal
fetal development: Report of a technical consultation. WHO:Geneva (online), ACC/SCN (2000) Low Birth Weight. Nutrition Policy Paper No 18.
Standing Committee on Nutrition:Geneva (online).
25. LNS paper 3 considers that in areas of food insecurity efforts to improve complementary feeding requires the provision of food
supplements. Operational guidance exists on infant and young child feeding in emergency situations; see IFE Core Group (2007) Infant
and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies: Operational Guidance for Emergency Relief Staff and Programme Managers. Version 2.1 – February 2007
(online). Guidance on when and how to use food supplements in children 6-24 months in non-emergency situations in food insecure
areas is less easy to find.
26. The programmatic guidelines on the use of cash assistance that are available are more applicable to emergency situations than regular
development settings (online). For a review of cash assistance use in more regular development settings; see Chapman K (2006)
Using social transfers to scale up equitable access to education and health services. DFID Background Paper, London (online).
27. Guidelines exist on how to control malaria infections that will contribute of improved maternal and child nutrition; see Roll Back
Malaria (2008) Malaria in pregnancy. Infosheet (online).
28. Guidelines on preventive chemotherapy for the control of helminth infections in humans is available for health programme managers;
see WHO (2006) Preventive chemotherapy in human helminthiasis. Coordinated use of anthelminthic drugs in control interventions: a manual for health
professionals and programme managers (online). Specific guidelines also exist for use of chemotherapy during pregnancy and lactation and in
young children; see WHO (2002) Report of the WHO Informal Consultation on the use of Praziquantel during Pregnancy/Lactation and Albendazole/
Mebendazole in Children under 24 months (online).
29. The LNS includes hand washing and hygiene interventions among the core measures that reduces the risk of diarrhoea, under the
assumption that these reductions contribute to reduce stunting. While it is recognized that reducing diarrhoeal diseases rates are not
necessarily associated with improvements in child growth (Poskitt EM, Cole TJ, Whitehead RG (1999) Less diarrhoea but no change in
growth: 15 years' data from three Gambian villages. Arch Dis Child. 80(2):115-9), the hygiene and hand washing dimensions of complementary
food preparation are an important part of the child “care” component of nutrition programmes. This is especially so in areas
where water and sanitation measures are poor. Programme guidelines exist on hand washing and hygiene, such as those described under
the UNICEF WASH Strategies (online).
30. Haddad L, Alderman H, Appleton S, Song L and Yohannes Y (2003) Reducing Child Malnutrition: How Far Does Income Growth
Take Us? The World Bank Economic Review 17(1) 107-31.
31. The World Bank publication Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development: A Strategy for Large-Scale Action from 2006 makes the case
that development partners and developing countries must increase investment in nutrition programs, and proposes to the international
development community and national governments a global strategy for accelerated action in nutrition. Full report and executive summary
in several languages are available online.
32. The LNS did not include any interventions related to improved maternal care, although they agreed that there is evidence that too
many pregnancies as well as smoking during pregnancy and exposure to household smoke could all have a negative impact on maternal
health as well as foetal growth. Programming guidance on how to improve maternal care is provided in the UNICEF Care Initiative,
(UNICEF (1997) The Care Initiative: Assessment, Analysis and Action to Improve Care for Nutrition. UNICEF:New York), which is explained in
the SCN Nutrition Policy Paper No 18 on Low Birth Weight (online).
33. The results of this work in progress will be posted at the WHO Nutrition for Health and Development webpage www.who.int/nutrition
34. Important advocacy tools include the executive summaries of the LNS available in English and French, and of the World Bank Repositioning
Nutrition as Central to Development available in English, French, Spanish and Chinese, referenced in notes 1 and 27 above, respectively.
35. Important advocacy tools for national implementation of the right to food, for example, is available from the FAO Right to Food
resources page at www.fao.org/righttofood/publi_en.htm, along with other material.
36. FAO has established a webpage on the issue of increasing food prices www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home, and the topic was in
focus at the High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy 3-5 June 2008.
37. Programme guidance for nutrition in emergency situations is available through the Toolkit for Addressing Nutrition in Emergency Situations
produced by the Nutrition Cluster of the Inter Agency Standing Committee (online).
38. The SCN Task Force on Assessment, Monitoring & Evaluation (March 2008) has recommended that for monitoring the progress
made towards the achievement of MDG1, both countries and development partners report against the prevalence of stunting in children
below the age of five as an internationally agreed indicator of endemic poverty. Furthermore stunting should be used as an additional
indicator of endemic poverty to monitor progress made towards the achievement of MDG1 (online).
39. Other sources of programme guidance include the Basics Nutrition Essentials, the World Bank Nutrition Tool Kit and the SCN Nutrition
Policy Paper No 19 What Works?. The latter was developed for use in Asia with the purpose of defining for the Asian Development
Bank a core menu of proven investment options supported by sound evidence of efficacy (online). Nutrition Essentials is a guide
for health managers in developing countries, and was produced in the late nineties by Basics in collaboration with UNICEF and WHO
(online). The World Bank' “Nutrition Toolkit” is aimed at helping World Bank staff design and supervise effective and feasible nutrition
projects and project components and to carry out comprehensive analysis of sectoral and policy issues affecting nutrition. The
documentation is comprehensive covering project design, basic facts on nutrition through to programme communication (online).