Viewpoints from the national consultation on addressing acute malnutrition on mainstreaming community-based program for management of acute malnutrition in India

Abstract

High burden of acute malnutrition among children less than 5 years is a major public health problem in India. A 'Two-days National Consultation on Addressing Acute Malnutrition' was organized to gather experiences and evidence from 13 states of India on prevention and management of acute malnutrition among children and documenting viewpoints from experts and government counterparts on the same. The consultation centered around five key themes of addressing acute malnutrition: 1) capacity building, 2) strengthening screening, 3) nutritional care of wasting, 4) tracking progress, and 5) scale-up. The paper highlights the experiences and key recommendations around the above key themes. It emerged that there is a need to further accelerate the efforts toward strengthening existing platforms and services to address acute malnutrition among children. Regular trainings of the frontline workers, increased convergence, regular monitoring, and continued service delivery during the pandemic should be undertaken for better outcomes.