Undernutrition in Infants and Young Children in India: A Leadership Agenda for Action

In India, child undernutrition happens very early in life; 30 per cent of Indian infants younger than six months old are underweight and 58 per cent of children in the age group 18–23 months old are stunted; moreover, 56 per cent of severe wasting in India happens before children are two years old. Recognising the centrality of the first two years of life to respond to India's nutrition challenge, the Coalition for Sustainable Nutrition Security in India called on an Expert Task Force on Infant and Young Child Nutrition to identify the ten evidence?based, high impact, cost?effective interventions with the greatest potential to reduce rates of undernutrition in infants and young children (0–23 months old) in India. These ten Essential Interventions are the evidence base for a broad?base Leadership Agenda for Action to Reduce Undernutrition in Infants and Young Children in India

The Impact of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene on Key Health and Social Outcomes: Review of Evidence

This evidence paper looks at 10 areas identified collaboratively with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on which WASH can plausibly have a strong impact: diarrhea, nutrition, complementary food hygiene, female psychosocial stress, violence, maternal and newborn health, menstrual hygiene management, school attendance, oral vaccine performance, and neglected tropical diseases. Together, these areas cover the most significant sector outcomes associated with the distinct life course phases that UNICEF seeks to help to address through its WASH activities

Successful Community Nutrition Programming:lessons from Kenya,Tanzania,and Uganda

Learning from success is the most effective and efficient way of learning.This report brings together the main findings of a series of assessments of successful community nutrition programming carried out in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda between 1999 and 2000. The overall aim of the assessments was to identify key lessons, or the main driving forces behind the successful processes and outcomes in these programs. Such elements of success fundamentally have to do with both what was done and how it was done. Experience with community-based nutrition programming, as documented in various syntheses and reviews during the 1990s, does show that malnutrition can be effectively addressed on a large scale, at reasonable cost, through appropriate programs and strategies, and backed up by sustained political support. In most cases, successful attempts to overcome malnutrition originate with participatory, community-based nutrition programs undertaken in parallel with supportive sectoral actions directed toward nutritionally at-risk groups. Such actions are often enabled and supported by policies aimed at improving access by the poor to adequate social services, improving women’s status and education, and\ud fostering equitable economic growth. Successful community-based programs are not islands of excellence existing in an imperfect world. Rather, part of their success has to do with contextual factors that provide an enabling or supportive environment. Some of these contextual factors are particularly influenced by policy, some less so. Contextual factors may include, for example, high literacy rates, women’s empowerment, community organizational capacity and structures, appropriate legislation. Nutrition program managers cannot normally influence contextual factors, at least in the short term.\ud In addition to favorable contextual factors, certain program factors contribute to successful programs, such as the design, implementation, and/or management of the program or project, which can, of course, be influenced by program managers. Both contextual and program factors, and the way they interact, need to be identified in order to understand the dynamics behind success. In 1998, under the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative (GHAI) supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), nutrition coalitions were formed in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. These nutrition coalitions, comprising individuals representing government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), donors, academic institutions, and the private sector, seek to advance the nutrition agenda both in policy and programming through coordination and advocacy efforts. One of the first tasks of the nutrition coalitions, under the leadership of the Program for Applied Technologies in Health (PATH) in Kenya, the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC) in Tanzania, and the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) in Uganda, was to prepare an inventory of community nutrition programs in their respective countries and identify of better practices in community nutrition programming. Country teams, supported by USAID/REDSO/ESA and LINKAGES/AED, then selected three successful programs in their respective countries based on preestablished "process" and "outcome" criteria. UNICEF has a long history of promoting and supporting community-based programs in Eastern and Southern Africa and has supported many reviews and evaluations. As part of its continued effort to strengthen community-based programs by learning from new success stories, UNICEF also identified for review a relatively large scale successful program in Tanzania\u

Effectiveness of measles vaccination and vitamin A treatment

Background The current strategy utilized by WHO/United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to reach the Global Immunization Vision and Strategy 2010 measles reduction goal includes increasing coverage of measles vaccine, vitamin A treatment and supplementation in addition to offering two doses of vaccine to all children

Hidden Behind Dental Trauma: Child Physical Abuse?

Child abuse, particularly physical abuse, is a massive and daily problem. The largest compiled data on violence against children which was published by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) suggest that around 6 in 10 children between the ages of 2 and 14 worldwide (almost a billion) are subjected to physical punishment by their caregivers on a regular basis

Book review : Beyond 18 - Leaving child care institutions: a study of aftercare practices in five states of India. UNICEF: India Country Office

This is a review of an overview report of a study conducted by Udayan Care in India with support from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Tata Trusts and the five State Governments of Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Rajasthan

Prospective pilots of routine data captures by paediatricians in clinics and validation of the disability complexity scale

AIMS To pilot prospective data collection by paediatricians at the point of care across England using a defined terminology set; demonstrate feasibility of data collection and utility of data outputs; and confirm that counting the number of needs per child is valid for quantifying complexity. METHOD Paediatricians in 16 hospital and community settings collected and anonymized data. Participants completed a survey regarding the process. Data were analysed using R version 3.1.2

Raising Clean Hands: Advancing Learning, Health and Participation through WASH in Schools

Call to Action for WASH in Schools is the result of a collaboration between CARE, Dubai Cares, Emory University Center for Global Safe Water, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, Save the Children, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Water Advocates, WaterAid, Water For People and the World Health Organization (WHO). The report puts forward a six-point plan towards providing each and every school child with access to quality water, child-friendly sanitation and hygiene facilities, and hygiene education for lifelong health; and it calls on decision-makers to increase investments and on concerned stakeholders to plan and act in cooperation -- so that all children go to a school with child-friendly water, sanitation and hygiene facilities

Quantifying multi-facted needs in a district disability clinic population: analysis of data captured at point of care and development of a disabilities terminology set and disabilities complexity scale.

AIMS To develop a Disabilities Terminology Set and quantify the multifaceted needs of disabled children and their families in a district disability clinic population. METHOD Data from structured electronic clinic letters of children attending paediatric disability clinics from June 2007 to May 2012 in Sunderland, north-east England collected at the point of clinical care were analysed to determine appropriate terms for consistent recording of each need and issue. Terms were collated to count the number of needs per child. RESULTS A Systemized nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms subset of 296 terms was identified and published, and 8392 consultations for 1999 children were reviewed. The required number of clinic appointments correlated strongly with the number of needs identified. Children with intellectual disabilities in addition to cerebral palsy and epilepsy had more than double the number of conditions, technology dependencies, and family-reported issues than those without

Child Labor in Catarman Northern Samar Parents’ Knowledge and Perceived Effectiveness of Print Materials

Child labor remains a serious problem in many parts of the world. Many of the children involved live in underdeveloped countries. In Catarman, the capital town of Northern Samar, this social dilemma holds true. The economic state of the province as one of the poorest provinces of the country has great impact on the most vulnerable sectors of the province’s populace, particularly the children. In fact, the Child Labor Committee of the municipality validated the existence of the following forms of child labor in the province: domestic helping; stevedoring; PD cab driving; farming; KTV or bar waiting; and vending. Non-government offices like United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Plan Philippines intervene to strengthen and implement appropriate measures to eradicate forms of child labor. This paper determined the parents’ knowledge level about Catarman child labor and evaluated the effectiveness of the print materials used by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Plan Philippines in campaigning against child labor as perceived by the parents. A mix of quantitative (survey) and qualitative (key informant) was used in generating data on the perceptions of parents and their sources of information. As to the perceived effectiveness of the print materials, the following themes were used: attractiveness; comprehension, self- involvement and persuasion. A thematic analysis on the transcribed key informants interviews was employed for the qualitative part