Field Exchange - Issue 45

The year 2013 promises to be an important year for the nutrition aid community and those whom it serves. Since the launch of the Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) movement in 2010, the Hunger Summit in London 2012 and other events and initiatives, nutrition – or rather the problem of undernutrition – has (at last) been receiving unparalled national and global attention. This year is proving to be a very important year for governments, civil society, donor organisations, UN agencies, businesses and foundations to deliver on this momentum. Targets and resource pledges to enable actions at the national and local levels to reduce stunting, acute malnutrition and micronutrient malnutrition are evolving.
By the end of 2013, there will have been numerous high level forums, meetings and conferences where advocates, decision makers and implementers will have gathered to demonstrate their commitment to what we should all consider to be the realisation of nutrition justice, i.e. the eradication of undernutrition in all its forms now and in the future.

This editorial casts a spotlight on the achievements and challenges relating to treatment of acute malnutrition and what the ENN have learnt from a recently completed review about the financing and systems landscape currently in place and the adjustments that will be needed if greater scale up is to be achieved. The review was undertaken by the ENN as a follow up to the 2011 CMAM Conference in Ethiopia, and was funded by Irish Aid and CIDA. We believe that the findings from this review raises important issues and want to use this editorial to share these, in the hope that the.