Flagship report

Uganda's Nutrition Action Plan II (2020/21–2024/25) – Impact

Policy Briefs

Every month mothers gather at a cooking demonstration at an Early Childhood Development centre in Lolachat in Nabilatuk District. Here mothers and caregivers are educated on the use of Complementary Feeding Bowls and Spoon which provides them with a simple tool to remember nutrition messages when they are preparing food for their child. — UNICEF/UNI662136/Rutherford

Highlights

UNAP II Policy Briefs: Highlights from the LiST analysis

These policy briefs explore the potential impact of Uganda's Nutrition Action Plan II (UNAP II) on child mortality, stunting, and anemia. Using the Lives Saved Tool (LiST), the analysis models and compares three different intervention scenarios from 2020-2025:

UNAP II: The original plan.
UNAP II+: The original plan plus other evidence-based interventions already being implemented in Uganda.
UNAP II+Zinc: The UNAP II+ plan with the addition of preventive zinc supplementation for children under five.

Under-5 Mortality

The enhanced scenarios save significantly more lives. The UNAP II+Zinc scenario is projected to save 13,959 lives by 2025, compared to 10,083 under the standard UNAP II plan.
This enhanced scenario also achieves the greatest reduction in the under-5 mortality rate, lowering it from 43.67 to 40.9 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Child Stunting

Adding zinc supplementation has a massive impact. The UNAP II+Zinc scenario would avert 396,399 cases of stunting, which is 2.3 times more than the standard plan.
The analysis reveals that zinc supplementation alone could prevent more stunting cases than all interventions in the original UNAP II combined.
The UNAP II+Zinc scenario would reduce the national stunting rate from 28.7 per cent in 2020 to 26.6 per cent by 2025.

Anemia in Women

The enhanced UNAP II+ and UNAP II+Zinc scenarios achieve a greater proportional reduction in anemia rates, lowering the rate among pregnant women to 30.0 per cent by 2025, compared to 31.1 per cent in the standard plan.
Interestingly, the standard UNAP II scenario averts a higher absolute number of cases. The briefs explain this is because the enhanced scenarios include family planning, which reduces the total number of pregnancies and thus the number of women at risk.