THE UNITED NATIONS WORLD FOOD

Published purpose

The Community-Based Nutritional Health project aims to reduce infant mortality in the Kayes, Koulikoro, Ségou, Sikasso, and Bamako regions, by improving the nutritional status of children under the age of five and of pregnant and nursing women and reducing the overall malnutrition rate. The project is designed to improve the ability of community and healthcare stakeholders to prevent, detect, and treat malnutrition, as well as to plan, manage, monitor and evaluate nutritional programs. The project also helps with diagnosing malnutrition at an early stage in children under the age of two, handling cases of moderate acute malnutrition that are detected among pregnant and nursing women and children aged 6-59 months, and increasing knowledge of good health and nutritional practices among women and the heads of household. Project activities include: procurement and distribution of food products (e.g. enriched flour, vegetable oil, millet and beans); treatment of moderate acute malnutrition; enhancing the ability of technical health care stakeholders to support child survival management programs at community health centres. This contribution is one part of the Community-Based Nutritional Health project, which has a total budget of $25 million. This contribution is part of Canada's maternal, newborn and child health commitment.