At the global World Food Day ceremony today speakers called for bolder and faster action across sectors to make healthy and sustainable diets available and affordable for all.

16 October, from 16:00 to 17:00 CEST ( 10:00-11:00 EDT)

This Wednesday the Accelerated Reduction Effort on Anaemia (AREA) Community of Practice (CoP) is hosting the webinar: Universal Health Coverage: What it means for anaemia reduction programmes.

The webinar will explore this topic through a discussion with Dr Ellen Piwoz, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Dr Rebecca A. Heidkamp, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

More information can be found at the WHO Nutrition website here

Registration can be found here

Universal Health Coverage: what it means for anaemia reduction programmes

Last month, world leaders adopted a high-level United Nations Political Declaration on Universal Health Coverage (UHC). It is the most comprehensive set of health commitments ever adopted at this level.

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) means that all people can use the health care they need without the risk of financial hardship and with the right quality to be effective, from preventive to palliative services.

What does this mean for anaemia, and is UHC attainable in anaemia reduction programmes?

This webinar will explore this topic through a discussion with Dr Ellen Piwoz, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Dr. Rebecca A. Heidkamp, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

We need to be well-equipped to join the UHC conversation at the national and global levels to advocate for anaemia reduction programmes.

You can also register to become a member of the AREA CoP, by clicking on the following link:

The Community of Practice (CoP) aims to support members of the global community dedicated to improving and scaling up existing methods and strategies for anaemia reduction in a holistic and cohesive manner; to build consensus for engagement in AREA at the global, regional and national level and commit to the achievement of the Global Nutrition Targets 2025 endorsed by the 65th World Health Assembly.

For the first time in 20 years, UNICEF’s flagship report examines the issue of children, food and nutrition, providing a fresh perspective on a rapidly evolving challenge.

This 2019 edition of The State of the World’s Children (SOWC) examines the issue of children, food and nutrition, providing a fresh perspective on a rapidly evolving challenge. Despite progress in the past two decades, one third of children under age 5 are malnourished – stunted, wasted or overweight – while two thirds are at risk of malnutrition and hidden hunger because of the poor quality of their diets. At the center of this challenge is a broken food system that fails to provide children with the diets they need to grow healthy. This report also provides new data and analyses of malnutrition in the 21st century and outlines recommendations to put children’s rights at the heart of food systems.

Download the report

Learn more

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is a member of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. CGIAR science is dedicated to reducing poverty and enhancing food and nutrition security in developing countries while also protecting the world’s natural resources and ecosystem services. ILRI’s conducts research on efficient, safe and sustainable uses of livestock—ensuring better lives through livestock.

ILRI fully supports the United Nations’ ‘Decade of Action on Nutrition’. In particular, the institute will continue to research the role of livestock production systems and animal-source foods (milk, meat and eggs) in healthy and sustainable diets in low- and middle-income countries. Over 800 million people are food insecure, with the number increasing annually. There are more than 150 million children under 5 years of age with stunted growth and 250 million not reaching their developmental potential. Animal-source foods can alleviate both stunted growth and development by providing highly bioavailable nutrients in the diets of vulnerable populations. In low-resource communities, however, these foods are often not available or accessible. ILRI will continue to investigate pathways and nutrition-sensitive interventions that increase sustainable animal-source food production and market access.

For further information, we welcome you to read the full commitment here.

Innovative collaboration is needed to reverse rising food insecurity rates and resume progress towards the eradication of hunger by 2030, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu told delegates gathered here today to open the 46th session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).
In particular, the funding will boost the efforts of countries in the targeted regions to bring about sustainable changes in agricultural policies and practices to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and natural resources
A new FAO report launched today by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization provides insights into how much food is lost - as well as where and why - at different stages of the food supply chain, calls for the informed decisions for an effective reduction and offers new ways to measure progress.
“We need all of civil society to play an active role”, the Director-General told the annual Forum of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM), a vehicle for the participation of non-governmental actors in policy formulation at the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). “FAO is here to help you.”
Information on the world’s forests will be more transparent and easy-to-use than ever in the coming years, thanks to a $3 million grant to FAO from Norway, which aims to improve global statistics on forest resources and their changes.

On Thursday, 10 October from 2-3pm (BST), IIED will host a Twitter chat to stimulate dialogue and debate around healthy diets and the need to transform our food systems to tackle the worsening nutrition crisis. In order to kickstart the conversation, IIED will tweet out a series of key questions and invite responses. The chat questions will be tweeted from IIED's Twitter account, @IIED.

The world is producing more food than ever before, yet the current food system is unequal. More than 820 million people – one out of every nine – still suffer from chronic food deprivation, while at the same time obesity is on the rise among children and adults, particularly among marginalised groups.

Urban areas are facing increasing food insecurity and malnutrition and unhealthy diets have become a leading risk factor for disease and death worldwide. Getting food on the table in cities is the theme of the next edition of Environment & Urbanization, that will be launched on World Food Day on 16 October.

Food systems must shift from simply producing food to providing sustainable and healthy diets for all and addressing all parts of the food system. IIED has worked with Hivos and others through the Sustainable Diets for All programme to document the problems and find solutions for improving access to sustainable, affordable, diverse and nutritious foods for all.

This year, World Food Day will promote healthy diets, and IIED and Hivos will host a ‘Healthy Diets Week’ between 14 and 18 October to highlight the contribution of sustainable diets to transforming local and national food systems.

More information available here

Green agriculture has a vast potential to transform the agricultural sector in a way that enables access for everyone to nutritious food and at the same time ensures conservation of crucial natural resources, FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said today at the International Agro-Industrial Forum in Moscow.

The Food and Nutrition Council conducted Traditional leaders’ sensitization meetings on the Multi-sectoral Community Based Model for addressing food and nutrition insecurity to reduce stunting (MCBM) programme across the nine districts of Murehwa, Mutoko, Hwange, Beitbridge, Insiza, Binga, Nkayi, Kariba and Zvimba. The meetings were held between the 16th and 19th of September 2019 and were attended by Chiefs, Headmen and Councilors. The purpose of the meetings was to secure the concrete commitment of traditional leaders to the programme. It also served as a platform for outlining the roles and responsibilities of the community leaders in food and nutrition programmes as well as updating the traditional leaders on the food and nutrition situation in their respective districts.

Traditional Leaders As Conduits of Stunting Reduction -Lessons Learnt


Since traditional leaders are fully connected with their communities, their involvement as agents of change towards optimal food and nutrition security is fundamental to the MCBM approach. This is one of the critical lessons that has been learnt in the implementation of the MCBM since its pilot and scale-up phases.