Regional CMAM meeting in Ethiopia 2011

In collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia and in consultation with national and international agencies, the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN) is planning a three day regional meeting on the scale-up of community based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM), to be held in Addis Ababa in November 2011. The aim of the meeting is to facilitate the sharing of lessons learned from Ethiopia, across the region and beyond, and to build consensus on a range of issues relating to national scale-up of services to manage severe acute malnutrition.

A key allied global initiative under which this meeting is located is the Framework for Action to Scale Up Nutrition (SUN Framework)¹. The Road Map for SUN clearly articulates a pressing need for improved sharing of experiences between countries and regions on policy development and programming as one mechanism by which to build national capacity in nutrition. A second, smaller half day meeting will take place on Day 4, when the key issues of relevance to the SUN will be discussed in relation to CMAM and scale up of actions to address all forms of undernutrition.

The meetings are co-funded by Irish Aid and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

The Ethiopia meeting will identify and document the policy environment, coordination, funding mechanisms, technical and operational considerations that are required to establish, expand and sustain service provision at national level. This forum is also intended to provide policy and programme related information and guidance to countries from Africa and Asia that are planning national level scale-up of CMAM. The forum should inform donors and encourage the most effective use of future resources.

Anticipated participants will be from government in a minimum of 16 countries from Africa and a number of Asian countries. Participants will be facilitated to write-up the CMAM scale-up experience in their respective countries as background papers and for presentation at the meeting. Donors, United Nations agencies, humanitarian agencies and ready to use therapeutic food (RUTF) producers will also be represented. A variety of media will be considered to reach stakeholders unable to attend the meeting.

The meeting will focus on ten thematic areas. These are:

• Policy environment, such as institutional stakeholder interests, governments ability to take on and sustain roll-out strategies.
• Funding, such as estimated costs, sources, mechanisms, sustainability.
• Linkages within the nutrition sector and other sectors.
• Effectiveness of public health systems to support national rollout strategies.
• Operational issues, such as supplies, coverage and impact, scale up/scale down considerations in emergency response.
• Capacity development, with particular regard to national health systems.
• Linkages with HIV programming, particularly in high-burden countries.
• Integrating infant and young child feeding measures into CMAM, as well as other preventative strategies.
• Future research needs and priorities.
• RUTF supplies, including local production challenges, private sector involvement, and development of standards within the industry.

A meeting report will be produced by ENN, providing an overview of the key issues identified and recommendations for research and policy directions and actions. Background papers prepared on selected country experiences with lessons learned in specific thematic areas will also be produced.

The Goverment of Ethiopia focal point for this meeting is Dr Ferew Lemma, Senior Nutrition Advisor, Federal Ministry of Health, Ethiopia. Contacts for the ENN organising team are Emily Mates (Ethiopia), email: emily@ennonline.net and Marie McGrath (UK), email: marie@ennonline.net

¹See news piece on this page.