Kolkata: Promoting Healthy Growth and preventing Childhood Stunting is a project coordinated by the WHO Department of Nutrition and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its aims are to develop tools and a framework to support countries in setting and implementing stunting reduction agendas; help shift focus from underweight to stunting as the indicator for tracking undernutrition; highlight the association between undernutrition in early life and later risk of overweight/obesity, associated with non-communicable diseases and contribute to the achievement of the 2012 World Health Assembly stunting reduction target . Recognition that nutrition-sensitive interventions also are critical for stunting prevention has broadened the scope of candidate actions for stunting reduction. Therefore, in addition to improved complementary feeding, interventions to strengthen food systems, promote healthy diets, improve maternal health, water supplies, sanitation and hygiene are among the multi-faceted actions being undertaken to address stunting, a WHO report said. Analysis of data on global trends and determinants of growth indicators Collaborating with global and country-level partners to set and implement national stunting reduction agendas Supporting countries to implement the WHO Child Growth Standards while promoting best practices for growth assessment and counselling on infant and young child feeding. Childhood Stunting: Context, Causes and Consequences is a conceptual framework that summarizes three levels of factors associated with stunting. It is a direct product of the Healthy Growth Project. It builds on the UNICEF conceptual framework on causes of malnutrition. Stunted growth and development are central to this framework. They share common causes and the period from conception to age 24 months is highly sensitive for both. Strategies that promote and protect healthy growth in this period benefit children's physical, mental, socio-emotional, and intellectual growth and development. Stunting in childhood has short-term and long-term consequences that affect health and human capital development. In addition to poor physical growth, stunting affects childhood risk of infection and mortality, cognitive and motor development, learning capacity and school performance. Later it affects productivity, wages, and reproductive health. Stunting followed by excessive weight gain in later childhood leads to increased risk of nutrition-related chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Among the immediate causes of stunting, complementary feeding is highlighted together with the importance of breastfeeding.(UNI)
