National Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition (2011-2015).

The present National Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition (2011-2015) aims at the following objectives: 1) Improve Nutrient Intake; 2) Prevent and Reduce Food-, Water-, Vector-borne and Infectious Diseases; 3) Increase and Diversify Domestic Food Production; 4) Improve Access to Food; 5) Improve Mother and Child Care Practices; 6) Improve Environmental Health and Food Safety; 7) Improve Institutions and Coordination; 8) Improve Human Capacity; 9) Increase Quality and Quantity of Information; 10) Increase Investment in Nutrition and Food Security.Under action areas the afore-mentioned Objective 3 on increase of domestic food production lists, inter alia, transfer of technology on sustainable ecologically sound agriculture and nutrient enhancing methods (i.e organic farm, soil improvement) and promotion of sustainable aquatic animal consumption and conservation of the resources.
Furthermore, the Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition is a strategic guideline based on a holistic causal analysis of the malnutrition situation in Myanmar. As such, it forms a comprehensive approach to address the immediate, underlying and basic causal factors from a farm to table food chain perspective and along the different life stages. On the basis of these analyses, strategic directions and objectives are outlined: 1) to address the immediate causes at the individual level, focus will be on improving nutrient intake and reducing food and water-borne as well as infectious diseases that affect the biological utilization of food; 2) To address the underlying causes (mainly at the household and community level), there is a need to improve food availability and accessibility. Further, mother and child care practices and environmental health/sanitation and access to health services should be improved; 3) Lastly, a number of strategies to address basic causes (mainly at the national level) have been identified. This includes improving institutional and human capacity, the collection and dissemination of relevant information, and advocating for investments in food based and health based interventions.
Chapter VIII deals with implementation of the Plan which shall take place in three phases: Short-term (2010-2012): In order to achieve immediate impact and set the foundations for sustainable long-term development, the Republic Union of Myanmar has defined a set of high-priority interventions for short-term implementation. Medium term (2010-2015) and Long term (2010-2020). Medium term and long term interventions represent the remaining interventions listed in the strategy section.
Section 2 of Chapter VIII on Working and governance structure specifies that the working and governance structure for the implementation of the present Plan of Action builds on the existing structures however, it should be recognized that there are organizational constraints that may warrant the establishment of a new multi-stakeholder platform for the Plan. A robust decision-making process and mechanisms by which those decisions are implemented are extremely important and the National Nutrition Center (NNC) of the Department of Health (DoH) shall perform, inter alia, the following functions: Overall design and implementation of the programme and its results; Channeling and mobilizing appropriate resources for the different strategic directions; Monitoring and evaluation; Aligning with broader development strategies; Aligning with sectoral policy processes; Setting priorities a, targets and guidelines for the programmes; Identifying key implementation functions; Diagnosing capacity and capacity gaps; Providing overall supervision.
The text consists of 9 Chapters as follows: Introduction (I); The Food and Nutrition Situation and Key Challenges (II); Causes of Malnutrition and Food Insecurity (III); Goal (IV); Targets (V); Guiding Principles (VI); Strategic Directions; (VII); Implementation Roadmap (VIII); Monitoring and Evaluation (IX).