IGAD states meet in Munyonyo, discuss nutrition

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the East, Central, and Southern Africa, Health Community (ECSA-HC), and Uganda’s health ministry have met at Speke Resort Munyonyo to discuss issues of nutrition surveillance.

Participants discussed ways to address the bottlenecks in collecting, analyzing, and using data for decision-making in their countries.

Dr Daniel Kyabayinze, the Director of Public Health at Uganda’s Health Ministry, said: "We have data, but we want to make sense of it, and we want to have quality data so that it can inform our decisions".

Lucy Daxbacher IGAD Head of Mission to Uganda and Daniel Kyabayinze Director Public Health Ministry of Health during the IGAD meeting on nutrition at Speke resort Munyonyo

According to Kyabayinze, nutrition is the backbone of people’s livelihoods, and there have been issues of food insecurity and malnutrition. He added that as they learn from each other, they can promote good nutrition in the region.

The meeting brought together government nutrition experts, universities, and research institutions in food and nutrition data from across the globe and was convened by the Learning Network on Nutrition Surveillance (LeNNS) initiative, which is hosted by the IGAD Centre of Excellence on Nutrition (ICEN).

LeNNS has members from Djibouti, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Somalia, and Uganda.

IGAD's head of mission to Kenya, Fatuma Adan, said the forum brings together countries to share resources and complement each other’s efforts.

She also said there is a nutrition crisis in the region, looking at the challenges the continent and region are facing in terms of climate change, particularly food and nutrition, insecurity, and the impact it has on the general population, mainly vulnerable groups including children, adolescents, women, pregnant mothers, and people who have chronic illnesses.

Participants attending the IGAD nutrition meeting at Munyonyo.

She called for a need to address issues of climate change and the implication it has on the region and the continent.

Dr Laetitia Ouedraogo, the regional advisor to nutrition and food safety at the World Health Organisation, said Africa has double challenges: A population, that is overnourished and undernourished, adding that they are starting to see the crisis of obesity, overweight in children, which, according to her, is critical because the health system is not ready to take care of these patients. 

Ouedraogo said that to tackle malnutrition, there is a need to work on full system transformation so that people are provided with nutrients and safe food everywhere at any time.

The three-day meeting started on May 31, 2023, and was organized under the theme: Opportunities and challenges in the nutrition data value chain for greater impact in policies and programs in IGAD and ECSA-HC Regions.