Four-day workshop on treatment of Severe Acute Malnutrition underway in Islamabad

According to a press release, the workshop is being conducted from 21-25th February 2016 in collaboration with the Nutrition program of Federal Health Ministry. The training workshop was inaugurated by Dr Baseer Achakzai, Director/National Program Manager, Nutrition.

The training includes participants from nine regional countries. Participants from all provinces and areas of Pakistan have joined in the workshop.

“The training workshop is focusing on building capacity of regional core team in nutrition to spearhead further training in Severe Acute Malnutrition management across the region and scaling up in high burden countries. A regional road map for expanding SAM management Project in the region will be discussed and recommendations will be made on the concluding day of the training workshop”, the release read.

“The expected outcomes of the training workshop on SAM are: Capacities of core teams for national SAM management to be built in all nine target countries and develop regional and National Action Plan developed for the treatment of Malnutrition”, the release mentioned.

Director/NPM Nutrition Dr. Baseer Achakzai, while addressing the gathering, said that the Ministry of National Health Services is greatly thankful for organizing such an important workshop (Training of the Trainers) on management of SAM (severe acute malnutrition).

“Pakistan is a major contributor to the high rates of malnutrition in the region, due to multiple natural disasters over the last years. This workshop will definitely provide us an opportunity to learn from the experiences of our regional countries which are facing similar emergency situations.

Pakistan is currently dealing with the issue with high interest and commitment, and an investmentplan now exists in all provinces, but still needs more integrated, multisectoral approaches to tackle the high rates of malnutrition including management of SAM”, he said.

Cluster lead and focal person on MNCH & Nutrition WHO Pakistan Dr Lamia Mahmoud said that the training workshop couldn’t have been organized at a more appropriate time as the National Parliament of Pakistan had recently nested the first ever global forum on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Nutrition, where according to the recommendations of parliamentary bodies and other UN agencies, Malnutrition emergency would be declared in Pakistan.

Dr Ayoub Aljawaldeh, Regional Advisor on Nutrition from WHO EMRO, oriented participants on efforts of the World Health Organization (WHO) towards improvement of management of severe acute malnutrition in countries with emergencies, whereby he introduced the new WHO updates that are constantly being generated.