Ethiopian progress towards achieving the global nutrition targets of 2025: analysis of sub-national trends and progress
- PDF / 719,775 Bytes
- 5 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 58 Downloads / 176 Views
BMC Research Notes Open Access
RESEARCH NOTE
Ethiopian progress towards achieving the global nutrition targets of 2025: analysis of sub‑national trends and progress inequalities Nebyu Daniel Amaha*
Abstract Objectives: The World Health Assembly (WHA) developed six global nutrition targets that focus on child and maternal nutrition. The progress made by individual countries is available as a yearly global nutrition report. However, reporting the national progress might mask important sub-national differences. This study aimed to measure the progress of the 11 regions of Ethiopia towards achieving the 2025 WHA targets using average annual reduction rates (AARR). Results: Ethiopia is off-track in meeting the five global nutrition targets studied. The national AARR of stunting is 2.3 against a target of 5.3, for wasting the current AARR is 3.1 against a target of 5.3. The AARR of non-exclusive breastfeeding was 2.1 close to the target of 2.7. Anemia in women of reproductive age increased across all the regions of Ethiopia. The majority of Ethiopian regions were on track to achieving the overweight and exclusive breastfeeding targets by 2025. There is an urgent need to address anemia in Ethiopian women of reproductive age because its prevalence has been increasing. Secondly, the progress to reduce wasting and stunting in children under-5 has not been enough and more work needs to be done if Ethiopia is to achieve the 2025 targets. Keywords: Average annual reduction rate, AARR, Malnutrition, Undernutrition, Stunting, Wasting, Global nutrition targets, Ethiopia Introduction Malnutrition is a preventable cause of death in almost half of children under 5 in developing countries [1]. The importance of nutrition for development has been recognized by governments and other stakeholders. The second goal of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focuses on nutrition and aims to end hunger, achieve food security, and improve nutrition. To identify opportunities for action and acknowledge efforts, it is important to monitoring the progress a country makes towards achieving the SDG targets [2–4]. In 2012 the World Health Assembly (WHA) endorsed six global *Correspondence: [email protected] Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, College of Health Sciences, Mekelle University, P.O Box: 1871, Mekele, Tigray, Ethiopia
nutrition targets to be achieved between 2012 and 2025. These goals focus on maternal, infant, and young child nutrition and included the following six targets which requires countries to reduce the number of stunted children under 5 by 40%; low birth weight by 30%; anemia in women of reproductive age by 50%; maintain wasting to less than 5%; prevent increase in childhood overweight and increase exclusively breastfed infants to at least 50% [5]. Many countries have made commitments towards achieving the 2025 Global Nutrition Goals and Ethiopia is one of these countries. The reports coming out of the Global Tracking Tool website show that Ethiopia is offtrack in meeting five of the goals and there is inadequate
Data Loading...
