Hi Casie,

Did you see the post with the GTAM technical brief here ?

It might be useful, as well as link you to others working on this. 

Best wishes,

Tamsin

Dear all,

As a contribution to the coronavirus pandemic response, UNSCN has compiled a list of available resources and key readings with a focus on nutrition and food systems. The list is available here.

This list will be continually updated and expanded as more resources become available.

Best wishes,

Tamsin

We may expect an excess of deaths in elderly people with the current Covid19 epidemic. This may have indirect unexpected consequences on nutritional status and survival of infants and young children. See an old often forgotten study suggesting that children with a living maternal grandmother have a better nutritional status and survival.

Sear R, Mace R, McGregor IA. Maternal grandmothers improve nutritional status and survival of children in rural Gambia. Proc Biol Sci. 2000 Aug 22;267(1453):1641-7.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2000.1190

Dear Casie,

Thank you for this question which is certainly a worry on many minds at the moment.

A few days ago UNICEF/GNC/GTAM released a Technical Brief on the Management of Child Wasting in the Context of COVID-19 which addresses your questions. 

For details on the infection prevention control (IPC) measures mentioned in the brief, you could refer to WHO Guidance on IPC during health care when COVID-19 infection is suspected (Published 19 March 2020) This includes standard precautions for facilities to take with all patients (e.g. those attending health and nutrition facilities for treatment of malnutrition). 

The above briefs may need to be translated further into some very practical actions field staff can take e.g. to facilitate physical distancing, indicate how far apart to stand in a queue by placing marks on the floor and create additional shaded waiting areas. The IASC Interim Recommendations for Adjusting Food Distribution SOPs in the Context of the COVID-19  (developed by WFP)  contain some very practical ideas that could be adapted for your CMAM programmes.

As the knowledge management partner for GTAM, ENN is monitoring en-net for technical gaps around COVID-19 and nutrition programming which may require the development of futher guidance so please do flag if the resources shared in this discussion thread don't meet your needs.

All the best,

Isabelle 

Hi Casie,

We are working on something similar for partners in Somalia. We created three PPT/Zoom presentations for partners, one each on communityhealth workers, IYCF and wasting, in Somali and English. After this we made a 'checklist of changes' for our context. We're at the moment light on concrete guidelines for stabilisation centres and the inpatient setting but would be interested in seeing what direction you're taking on that. I can share our checklist with you if wish and you can pull out what might be relevant for you.

Best,

Ciara 

Hi Ciara, 

I would appreciate it if you could share your checklist and PPT/ZOOM. It sounds really interesting. In relation to Issables response on the Technical Brief on the Management of Child Wasting in the Context of COVID-19 . While this is comprehensive, it is however a brief on treatment only. To manage wasting we need to look at prevention and in particular the high rates of wasting that has its origins in utero and presenting at birth. 

We upscaled our CMAM program to include the targeted delivery of food and MMN to malnourished pregnant mothers. I am happy to share our technical brief with anyone who is interested.

Kind Regards,

Pat

Dear Pat,

Of course, the recording and audio of the three webinars can be found here under the 'SOMALIA NUTRITION CLUSTER UPDATES' heading: https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/somalia/nutrition 

The excel checklist and the PPT slides I will have to share separately, they are not yet on the cluster page. You can email me at chogan@unicef.org and I can forward them to you.

Best,

Ciara

I see one of the mitigation measures is to stop distributing IEC materials to the community as they may transfer the infection.

Best

Nahar King Welfare Organization (NKWO) welcome to you and your all team. Regards. M Ajmal CEO www.naharking.org