Building on the significant progress made in Phase One of our Liberia investment (2017-2020) The Power of Nutrition and UNICEF are continuing their partnership in Liberia and committing to a further 3 year programme.
Phase Two of the programme is structured around three key areas.
This programme will continue to scale-up 10 proven direct nutrition interventions across all 437 public health facilities in Liberia. Included amongst these 10 interventions is the treatment of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) as well as Vitamin A Supplementation (VAS), the roll-out of which has been adjusted following lessons learned in Phase One. The programme will also see the implementation of a new community nutrition arm, to ensure interventions reach communities at the household level, complementing health facility-based services. Within these interventions specific focus will be paid to adolescent nutrition and nutrition for school age children, which will work alongside sexual and reproductive health services already established by the Ministry of Health.
To continue improving demand for nutrition services, this programme will strengthen accompanying messaging surrounding the interventions, as well as the quality of relevant education and counselling. Specific activities include a coordinated and gender-sensitive behaviour change communications strategy, revision of existing nutrition messages and prioritisation of high-level advocacy for nutrition across the government of Liberia.
3. Strengthening the enabling environment for nutrition
This programme will work alongside other development partners to enhance the enabling environment for nutrition through key financial and technical assistance. This will include developing a Costed Strategic Plan for the National Nutrition Programme, a strong focus on generating quality programme data and strengthening multisectoral coordination at national and subnational levels.
Phase One of our Liberia investment has enabled over 1 million children to access age-specific nutrition interventions and over 500,000 pregnant and lactating women to access essential nutrition services. The proposed Phase Two of our will build on the success and key lessons learned during Phase One, with an overall aim to accelerate the reduction of stunting in Liberia and reach the Government’s aggressive goal to reduce stunting from 32% in 2018 to 22% in 2023.
Key indicators to measure the success of the proposed programme include: proportion of children receiving treatment for severe acute malnutrition, proportion of children receiving Vitamin A supplementation and micronutrient powders as well as the proportion of pregnant women receiving 180 days worth of IFA alongside 180 days of appropriate incant and young child feeding counselling.
Implementing partners: UNICEF, Government of Liberia
The Power of Nutrition Donors: FCDO, Medicor Foundation