JANO webinar held on value chain study to improve the lives of pregnant and lactating women
The project is funded by the European Union and co-funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation
Joint Action for Nutrition Outcome (JANO) project organised a webinar on Thursday to publish the findings of a study on value chain.
The project is funded by the European Union and co-funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation. The objective of the project is to contribute in ending malnutrition of Pregnant and Lactating Women (PLW) together with addressing the nutritional needs of children under five years of age, and adolescent girls.
The project will closely work with the Government of Bangladesh (GoB) at the national, regional and local levels, to support the effective implementation of the National Plan of Action for Nutrition 2 (NPAN 2).
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Research for the study has been conducted under the JANO project to find how the cultivation of highly nutritious foods in homestead garden and rearing cattle along with ensuring safe water, cleanliness and proper sanitation can help battle malnutrition.
From the study it came that the top- ranked food items, or the most suitable food items for homestead cultivation for women, are pumpkin, leafy vegetables, tomato, beans, okra, banana, papaya, and dairy and the highest ranked WASH items were sanitary latrines and sanitary napkins.
The webinar was held with a view to disseminate the findings of the study and seek opinions from the guests on the issue.
Dr M Abdul Mueed, the director-general of the agricultural extension department was present as the chief guest of the program. The delegates of the European Union, delegates of different government and non-government organization related to the study, development partners, academicians, practitioners, experts concerned and journalists were present on the occasion.
The chief guest, special guests and other discussants emphasized the importance of ensuring safe food including production, processing and consumption phase. It also came up that cultivation of low-cost but highly nutritious food such as moringa leaf, sweet potato, egg, fortified crop, etc is also important in addition to the study findings.
Discussants also added that finding out alternative ways of producing low-cost sanitary napkins and toilets is necessary and strong support from the private sector is needed.
JANO Project is working to improve the nutrition status of 2 lakh 75 thousand 415 pregnant and lactating mothers and 1 lakh 90 thousand 322 children under the age of five in Rangpur and Nilphamari through 64 Union Parishads, 263 community clinics and 330 schools.
The project is being run on the basis of four expected results and building effective functional linkage among project participants, public sector and private service providers is one of the most important strategies of the project.
The study was conducted to identify the gap and opportunity for building such linkage. The project is also working closely with Nutrition Coordination Committees of the Government of Bangladesh and contributing to implement National Nutrition Plan 2 (NPAN-2).
