Papua New Guinea National Nutrition Policy 2016-2026.

The National Nutrition Policy (NNP) 2016-2026 is a multi-sectorial response to address malnutrition in Papua New Guinea. Its goal is to improve nutrition for all Papua New Guineans through evidence-based, coordinated nutrition approaches that optimize resources and align actions.
The strategy provides a contextual analysis of the malnutrition problem and its challenges including the lack of national and sub-national coordinating bodies to effectively plan, budget and manage the multi-sectoral response and limited technical capacity in nutrition throughout health services, education institutions and the agriculture sector.
To eliminate malnutrition the government efforts will focus implementing seven priority objectives as follow: 1-Strengthening nutrition governance, coordination, communication, partnerships and research to effectively plan, implement, monitor and evaluate nutrition activities across sectors; 2- Improving nutrition capacity including pre-service training, cross sector in-service training; 3- Implementing and strengthening interventions to prevent, control and treat under nutrition, including low birth weight, stunting, wasting and underweight across the lifecycle (focusing on adolescents and women of childbearing age, pregnant and lactating women, children under 5, pre-school and primary school children); 4- Strengthening interventions to prevent and control micronutrient deficiencies including iron, vitamin A, iodine, zinc and other micronutrient; 5- Implement interventions to prevent and control overweight and obesity to reduce the risk of diet related lifestyle diseases; 6-Strengthen interventions to prevent and control malnutrition among vulnerable groups, in particular, people living with HIV (PLHIV), TB, mental illness and disabilities, and people living in institutions; and 7 – Strengthen interventions that protect resilience and support recovery of households from the impact of nutrition emergencies and other vulnerabilities.
Some of the activities included in the nutrition strategy will contribute towards enabling more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems. Such activities include interventions to increase knowledge and skills, including technology transfer for food producers on the value chain approach (Farm to Fork), supporting food testing and monitoring services to monitor and protect food safety, promoting and support the use of codex food standards, and implementing activities to collect data on food security in PNG. The efforts towards nutrition improvement will also contribute towards poverty reduction interventions. Such efforts include strengthening and support of social safety nets for vulnerable households to improve the health and nutrition situation and cash transfers or vouchers system to improve the family basket foods content.
Regarding governance, in order to provide interim coordination for two years at national, provincial, district and local level, a National Nutrition Committee will be established under the National Health Board. After that, a Food and Nutrition Council will be responsible for the overall coordination of the nation's nutrition agenda. To track progress of NNP implementation and performance a comprehensive and integrated multi-sectoral approach monitoring system for nutrition will be developed.