National Nutrition Strategy.

The key objective of this National Nutrition Strategy (NNS) is to ensure that all Ethiopians secure adequate nutritional status in a sustainable manner, which is an essential requirement for a healthy and productive life. The specific objectives are: to provide due attention to malnourished vulnerable groups of society, particularly children under five, pregnant and lactating women; to ensure the citizens are free from malnutrition related health problems; to protect the society from unhealthy dietary patterns and unhealthy lifestyle that may affect their health; and to coordinate and support nutritional activities of all sectors, government, non-governmental organizations and individuals working to alleviate nutritional problems (pag. 6). The Food Security Strategy is a comprehensive prioritization of the government's activities. The Food Security Strategy contributes a great deal to the alleviation of malnutrition. Therefore, it is envisaged to strengthen the implementation of both the National Nutrition Strategy and Food Security Strategy for better results. Agricultural Extension Workers and Health Extension Workers have an important role to play by teaching and encouraging household s to adopt , produce and consume micro-nutrient dense foods and animal products to complement staple food crops. Income generating activities will be expanded and promoted to increase purchasing power of households (pag. 10).
Improving water supplies and sanitation is a core component of both care and health services as underlying determinants of improved nutrition. Nutrition considerations and interventions, particularly sustaining proper care for the nutritionally vulnerable and ensuring a healthy environment, are to be integrated with emergency response systems and will be addressed in a coordinated manner (5.4). A healthy environment is crucial to attaining and sustaining good nutritional status and proper growth among infants and young children in particular. Efforts to bring safe water supplies and proper sanitary facilities to all households shall be intensified in collaboration with different sectors. It is crucial to ensure their use, maintenance, and to bring about the consistent use of hygienic practices in households, especially the use of soap and regular hand washing (6.10). There will be an emphasis on mainstreaming and strengthening nutrition activities through community-based nutrition programs that contribute to the reduction of food insecurity and consumption of unbalanced nutrients. The methods of tackling the underlying causes will be established and implemented through community based health and agriculture extension programs, health service delivery, education and gender programmes (pag. 6).
Continuous monitoring and assessment of the nutritional status of the community on a regular basis is needed to understand the depth of nutritional problems and find solutions. In addition to this, nutrition information is crucial evaluating the effectiveness of different nutrition intervention programs. Additional nutritional indicators will be used to monitor the situation (pag. 12). The Strategy will provide land distribution to the food insecure and employment and income generation for food insecure households. In particular, it will scale up distribution of communal land titles to indigenous minorities; and improve access of poor farmers who have received land titles to agricultural support services and markets. In addition, the Strategy will seek to enhance technical and vocational educational training for the poor and food insecure in rural areas to increase skills and employ; specifically, enhanced work skills needed for agro-processing enterprises and agro-economic concession, and enhanced social protection in the informal wage sector specifically for women will be sought.