WEBINAR: Safeguarding Progress Towards Improved Nutrition During the COVID-19 Pandemic

11 August 2020. 3 PM CEST. Safeguarding Progress Towards Improved Nutrition During the COVID-19 Pandemic: USAID Partner Experiences (Part 1).

13 August 2020. 12 PM CEST. Safeguarding Progress Towards Improved Nutrition During the COVID-19 Pandemic: USAID Partner Experiences (Part 2)

The COVID-19 crisis is creating shocks across multiple sectors and systems that are essential to improving and safeguarding nutrition. 

USAID's Guiding Principles and Recommendations for Nutrition in the Context of COVID-19 (June 2020,  14 pages) summarizes the likely impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on nutrition and proposes guiding principles for priority actions during the response and recovery phases.

Priority Actions During Response: Immediate priorities are to safeguard access to safe, nutritious foods, particularly for young children and pregnant and lactating women; continue to promote and protect breastfeeding; and maintain delivery of life-saving nutrition interventions through health systems and humanitarian response while minimizing risks of transmission. 

Priority actions include:

• Food Systems Programming (p.6): Promote commercial production and support market measures for safe and nutritious foods; maintain local production of nutrient dense foods.
• Health Systems Programming (p.7-9): Promote and protect breastfeeding; complementary feeding; vitamin A supplementation (VAS); management of wasting and acute malnutrition; maternal nutrition counseling and supplementation.
• Humanitarian Assistance and Safety Net Programming (p.9-10): Continue to provide essential health and nutrition services while reducing direct contact with beneficiaries; safeguard social protection programs with an increased focus on supporting access to nutritious foods and nutrition services.