Malnutrition in the OIC Member
Countries: A Trap for Poverty
COMCEC
Asian Regional Policies
The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has a regional action
framework for nutrition. This framework contains four pillars, or overarching strategic
approaches, to guide nutrition actions in the region. These are:
1. Building high level political commitment to nutrition governance with the aim of
strengthening multi-sectoral policies, plans and programmes in order to effectively
address basic and underlying causes of undernutrition.
The SAARC framework specifically supports placing the coordinating body for nutrition at
the highest level of government and not within a specific ministry to enhance effective
multi-sectoral coordination. It is also key that governments continuously monitor those
groups who are most vulnerable to undernutrition, and ensure that continual analysis of
the situation allows governments to course correct policies, should they see a shifting
pattern of malnutrition (for example, an increase in overweight and obesity). The plan
also specifies that high level political commitment must be matched by commensurate
budget allocation to enable investment in nutrition programmes.
2. Investing in the scale-up of proven, cost-effective nutrition specific and nutrition sensitive
interventions, focusing on women and children.
Scale-up needs to be done in a way which is sensitive to local needs and done in a way
which ensures equity and targeting of the poorest and most vulnerable. Proven nutrition
actions should include those highlighted by the Lancet series for addressing
undernutrition in the first 1 0 0 0 days, as well as focusing in improving nutrition for
adolescent girls to prevent low birthweight children. Nutrition interventions should not
be limited to those actions which address undernutrition but should also target
overweight and obesity in areas where those are a problem. Nutrition sensitive
interventions need to be implemented along-side nutrition specific programmes in order
to address the underlying and basic causes of poor nutritional.
3. Investing in human and institutional capacity to manage nutrition programmes at the
national and subnational level.
Periodic capacity needs assessment should be carried regularly, looking at the capacity of
everyone from decision makers to service delivery personal to identify capacity needs and
develop plans for strengthening capacity.
4. Development of a coherent monitoring framework for reporting and knowledge
management to improve accountability of stakeholders implementing nutrition actions.
Results based management systems to track progress against indicators needs to be
developed along with effective nutrition information systems which allow for tracking
data disaggregated by gender, urban/ rural and socioeconomic groupings (South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation, n.d.).
European Regional Policy: The WHO Regional Nutrition Plan for Europe 2015 -2 0 2 0
OIC Countries : Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan.
Unlike the African Regional strategy, which is still largely focused on reducing undernutrition
and promoting food security, with a mention of preventing increases in over nutrition, the
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