While policymakers and public health leaders manage a range of urgent priorities, delivering good nutrition must be a foundational component of an effective pandemic response strategy. Good nutrition helps lessen the effects and risks of COVID-19, and is a prerequisite for the physical, immunological, and cognitive development of children and the health and productivity of adults. In short, no individual, community, or nation can thrive without good nutrition.
Standing Together for Nutrition (STfN) formed as a multidisciplinary consortium of nutrition, economics, food and health system experts working to address the scale and reach of COVID-related nutrition challenges. In addition to assessing the impact of COVID-19 on nutritional status, STfN will model projected impacts during the short- and long-term recovery phases of the pandemic and identify recommendations to mitigate damage. The Micronutrient Forum is a proud member of the STfN consortium and is working with partners across sectors on this project.
To help inform and guide prioritization ahead of the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit and Food Systems Summit in 2021, the STfN consortium authored a commentary in the The Lancet published Monday, July 27, 2020.
The Lancet commentary, Impacts of COVID-19 on childhood malnutrition and nutrition-related mortality, presents early estimates from experts on the combined economic and health systems crisis on child wasting and related mortality in the context of the pandemic.
It is a companion piece to Child malnutrition and COVID-19: the time to act is now, also published in The Lancet from the directors-general of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, World Food Programme (WFP), and World Health Organization (WHO), which issued a call to action to protect children’s right to adequate nutrition in the face of COVID-19. Read the UNICEF News Release.
