The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), in collaboration with the Khartoum State Ministry of Health (SMOH), has launched a nutrition support programme for the first time in Khartoum, Sudan, for 175,000 pregnant and nursing women and children under five.

It was noted that managers of the nutrition programme, funded by the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and implemented by the Khartoum SMOH, will screen children at the community level and refer them to health centres for appropriate treatment if identified as malnourished.

Development Diaries learnt that the WFP will provide specialised nutritious food as well as nutrition counselling at the health centres to treat children and mothers suffering from moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) and catch children before they deteriorate to severe acute malnutrition (SAM).

‘Malnutrition at its extremes is a matter of life and death, and in the long term can hold back people and countries, undermining economies and development. We are very pleased to have launched the Khartoum nutrition programme which will contribute to improving the health and nutritional status of people in the Khartoum State’, the Sudan representative and Country Director of WFP, Hameed Nuru, said.

‘WFP is also working with authorities to gradually scale up its nutrition support in River Nile and Gezira States in the coming months, which will increase the number of states where WFP provides nutrition support to 16 states’.

The project, it was gathered, will be implemented in 31 health centres in seven localities – Umdurman, Karrari, Umbada, Bahri, Shargelnil, and Jabal Aulia – across Khartoum, where SMOH is implementing community management of SAM supported by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Source: W Food Programme