FAO Child Wasting prevention action plan 2023-2024
Document
As part of the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has launched a child wasting prevention action plan (2023-2024) to enhance nutrition in emergencies and resilience agriculture responses to prevent child wasting.
FAO aims to reach 1 million vulnerable households with at-risk children, pregnant and lactating women and girls. FAO will scale up, improve, and coordinate preventive and/or crisis response actions by strengthening nutrition in its emergency and resilience interventions. These efforts will promote small-scale farming and home gardening, small animal husbandry, food and nutrition education, and food safety.
The constant monitoring of the food security situation and the integration of food and dietary data will be key to understanding the risk factors of child wasting and tailoring and evaluating preventive strategies.
FAO will support countries to build the resilience of individuals in greatest vulnerability and foster household livelihoods, thus breaking the cycle of distress that underlies child wasting. FAO's commitment is to ensure that children are breastfed and have access to an adequate and diverse diet in the first years of their lives by supporting agrifood systems that provide safe and nutritious food to meet the needs of children and women.
There is an urgent need to complement life-saving interventions with preventive measures that will help keep recovered children out of wasting and avoid future cases.
FAO's response complements the combined efforts of the other UN Agencies to raise awareness about the critical role of agrifood systems in ensuring the availability, affordability, and access to healthy diets to support the prevention of child wasting and all forms of malnutrition.
Publisher
FAO
Publication date
2022
Language
English
