The Management of Nutrition in Major Emergencies (WHO - OMS, 2000, 250 p.): Acknowledgements

The Management of Nutrition in Major Emergencies (WHO - OMS, 2000, 250 p.)

		(introduction...)
		Preface
		Acknowledgements
		Chapter 1. Meeting nutritional requirements
		Chapter 2. Major nutritional deficiency diseases in emergencies
		Chapter 3. Assessment and surveillance of nutritional status
		Chapter 4. Nutritional relief: general feeding programmes
		Chapter 5. Nutritional relief: selective feeding programmes
		Chapter 6. Prevention, treatment, and control of communicable diseases
		Chapter 7. The context: emergency preparedness and response programmes
		Annex 1. Nutritional requirements
		Annex 2. Basic facts about food and nutrition
		Annex 3. Nutritional anthropometry in emergencies
		Annex 4. Statistical procedures for nutritional surveys
		Annex 5. Use of particular foods in emergencies
		Annex 6. Guiding principles for feeding infants and young children in emergencies
		Annex 7. Programme indicators
		Annex 8. Biochemical assessment of micronutrients
		Annex 9. Human resource development for the management of nutrition in major emergencies: outline of an educational programme
		Back Cover

Acknowledgements

A special debt of gratitude is owed to the following individuals who contributed chapters and/or made other significant textual inputs to the development of this manual: Kenneth V. Bailey, Angela Berry, Graeme A. Clugston, Bruno de Benoist, Danielle Deboutte, Olivier Fontaine, Susan Peele Morris, Philip Nieburg, Ron Ockwell, Clare Schofield, and Zita Weise Prinzo.

WHO is also grateful to the following people for reviewing the manuscript at different stages and providing valuable comments: Anne Ashworth, David Alnwick, Rita Bhatia, Sarah Ballance, Mercedes de Onis, Claude de Ville de Goyet, Mohammed Dualeh, Natalie Domieson, Ellen Edwards-Wasserman, Anna Ferro-Luzzi, Michael Gurney, Stephen Hansch, Ailsa Holloway, Philip James, Wolf Keller, Stephen Lwanga, John Mason, Julia Stuckey, Michael Teihades, Michael Toole, and Anna Verster.

Many helpful inputs were provided by the staff of various WHO departments on a range of nutrition, health, emergency, and logistic issues such as those relating to diarrhoeal disease, environmental health, food safety, immunization, and malaria. Grateful acknowledgement is therefore made to the Departments of Emergency and Humanitarian Action, Nutrition for Health and Development, Child and Adolescent Health, Protection of the Human Environment, and Vaccines and Other Biologicals, and to nutrition staff in the WHO regional offices. WHO is also grateful for the comments provided by the ACC/SCN (United Nations Administrative Committee on Coordination/Sub-committee on Nutrition) Ad Hoc Working Group on Nutrition of Refugees and Displaced People.

WHO wishes to thank the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the World Food Programme (WFP) for their financial support for the development and publication of this manual.

Main functions of a national nutrition programme in emergencies

· Identifying, in health and other information systems, data, indicators and sources for nutritional surveillance and early warning.

· Collecting and storing baseline data, analysing and disseminating relevant information, for purposes of policy-making, strategic planning, advocacy, and public awareness and participation.

· Defining strategies, programmes, technical standards, guidelines, and procedures (including food ration and distribution systems, newsletters/bulletins, lists of nutrition resource persons in the area) for nutritional and food surveillance, generalized, selective, and therapeutic feeding programmes, and micronutrient fortification or supplementation.

· Organizing rapid assessments to determine the presence and extent of nutritional emergencies, and full assessments of nutritional status in valid samples of children and adults.

· Developing continuing surveillance of nutritional status in emergency-affected areas, including monitoring the adequacy of food distribution systems and the impact of interventions, and contributing to the building and interpretation of databases on food availability and its adequacy, food stocks, logistic systems, food control systems, etc.

· Ensuring that appropriate therapeutic management is provided for severely malnourished individuals.

· Developing institutional and human capacities and learning materials for in-service training of nutritionists and other health and administrative staff, including those responsible for food distribution, handling, preparation, etc., and for therapeutic feeding, and for strengthening training curricula on nutrition in emergencies for all categories of health personnel.

· Liaising with the emergency coordination cell and other health units and programmes, exchanging information and plans, integrating nutrition activities in primary health care, and coordinating with the nutrition-related components of other programmes and/or activities (e.g. immunization, control of diarrhoeal diseases, maternal and child health, and environmental health services including food safety).

· Liaising, through the emergency coordination cell, with other relevant ministries (e.g. local government, agriculture, social welfare, community development, commerce, finance, public works), as well as with relief and development agencies, for information and advocacy concerning nutritional needs, and to seek their technical, material, and/or financial support for intersectoral plans and operations, including appropriate local food production, processing, and marketing.

· Participating in the activities of national coordination committees for food security, food distribution, monitoring and nutrition risk-mapping, advocacy, and resource-mobilization.