Conference on government experiences of CMAM scale up, Ethiopia, 2011

The Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN) in collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia led a conference to capture government experiences of scale-up of Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) in Addis Ababa, 14-17th November, 2011. The Conference was co-funded by Irish Aid, UK Aid (DFID) and CIDA.

The purpose of the conference was to provide a ‘live’ forum for the discussion of issues relating to national scale-up of CMAM from a government perspective. Senior government representatives from 22 African and Asian countries participated in the conference, in addition to representatives from UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, academia, bilateral donors, foundations and individual experts. A total of 144 delegates attended.

The first three days focused on CMAM scale up. Nine countries with experience of scale up (Ethiopia, Pakistan, Niger, Somalia, Kenya, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Mozambique) shared experiences for discussion based on carefully constructed case studies. The India delegation shared particular considerations around CMAM scale-up and an additional 12 countries shared their experiences. Day 4 considered the findings of the CMAM experiences in the context of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement.

Detailed country case study write up, a synthesis paper highlighting common themes and findings from the country case studies and conference proceedings, and a meeting report are being finalised and will feature in a special edition of Field Exchange 43. Meanwhile, film footage of many of the speakers, presentation summaries and background information are available at: www.cmamconference2011.org