Blantyre District Council set to fight stunting
Blantyre District Council nutrition officer Fyness Maloya says the council is geared to improve nutrition levels in the district by employing the newly formulated community behaviour tracking tools under Scaling up Nutrition Programme.
She said this on Friday during an orientation of District Nutrition Coordination and District Monitoring and Evaluation committees on the use of the tool developed to track progress on the implementation of the programme.
Maloya said the programme seeks to empower local committees with nutrition, child and maternal health knowledge.
She said a baseline study conducted in the district showed that stunted growth is at 32 percent while underweight growth is at 15 percent and wasting is at three percent.
with stunting
“Blantyre is still struggling with stunting, wasting and underweight but the community behaviour tracking tool will help in tracking behaviour change among communities since lack of proper tracking results contributes to poor implementation of needed interventions,’ said Maloya.
Farmers Union of Malawi (FUM) monitoring and evaluation officer John Kasitomu said the tool will provide direction on how communities are performing in terms of nutrition.
“This tool is simple and user-friendly. It also triggers community dialogue. Where the community discovers low-performing indicators, they will engage at that level and map the way forward and implement their own plans at the same level,” he said.
Kasitomu said the tool will strengthen the district and its structures by making sure that the systems are in place and working.
With support from KFW through Unicef, the council is implementing the interventions in collaboration with FUM.
