JICA utilizes a wide range of approaches to work with private organizations and citizens for nutrition improvement.
Cambodia
Better Prenatal Nutrition
Preah Vihear Province in Cambodia has the nation's worst nutrition indicators: 30.7 percent of underweight children, 44.3 percent of growth stunting, and undernutrition is rampant. The parents of these children often do not recognize that their child is underweight; moreover, the mothers lack knowledge about complementary feeding and feed them nothing but white rice gruel. To tackle this situation, this child health and nutrition improvement project is directly addressing the most important period in a child's life, the first 1000 days which develops the foundation for their future health.
Training of the health center staff and VHSG who are provide Integrated Growth Monitoring Services.
JICA is working with Services for the Health in Asian and African Regions (SHARE), an organization that has worked for the past 10 years to improve the nutrition of children in Cambodia. Their rich experience is being applied to the project area and, together with the HC staff and VHSG [1] , they are conducting Integrated Growth Monitoring Services (IGMS) [2] . Together with the Women and Child Committee members, SHARE has developed the Cambodian complementary food recipe book which uses local food resources. "One of the problems was that many mothers had no concept of "complementary food," and their children dislike eating because the food is not appropriate for a baby. That is why mothers need to gain proper knowledge on complementary feeding at the class," said SHARE's Sei Morgan Mieko.
In order to secure the funding, which is vital for sustaining their activities, SHARE conducts workshops for Women and Child committee members using the funding made available by local government to increase their role and responsibilities. People in regional communities have begun to use their own initiative, and this workshop has contributed to gaining community funding for Just One Time Cooking [3] activities in every single village where SHARE works. In the future, SHARE plans to cooperate with the various counterparts, from the provincial level to village level, and will continue working to bring smiles to mothers and children.
Infant health checkups are conducted by health center staff and Health Volunteers.
A baby food class in session.
Notes
- [1]Village Health Supporting Groups: village based volunteer and a part of health system in Cambodia
- [2]IGMS: promotion and prevention of child health services as a part of health center's community outreach program
- [3]Just One Time Cooking: SHARE's innovative complementary food cooking process
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