12 January 2016

What is Your Country's Nutrition Profile?



We have finally completed the rather mammoth task of updating all 193 nutrition country profiles for the latest version of the Global Nutrition Report.

Thanks to our fantastic data analysts and data management team at IFPRI.

The country profiles can be downloaded as 2 page PDF files here.  All the data can also be downloaded as spreadsheet and STATA files.

Regional, sub-regional and a global profiles will follow shortly.

The profiles really are fantastic resource.  For each country we have over 80 indicators, pulled together from various UN and other sources.

The indicators address both undernutrition and obesity, overweight and diabetes.  They cover nutrition status, programme coverage, policies, underlying determinants, spending, legislation and institutional transformation.

Please use them and let us know how to make them more useful!

1 comment:

  1. It often remains a difficult concept to get across, but each person's health can already be determined before his or her birth. Before and during pregnancy. A woman's nutritional status before she conceives can have a huge impact on her child. Since 1991, it has been known that adequate folate levels can contribute greatly to reducing the risk of an infant being born with neural tube defects such as Spina Bifida and the fatal condition Anencephaly. While the indicators do show whether there is wheat fortification legislation, this is not enough to determine whether countries are effectively reducing the incidence of these birth defects. When left untreated, as often happens in developing countries, children with Spina Bifida, and the often associated Hydrocephalus, are at high risk of severe, lifelong disabilities and premature mortality. It would be a great addition if the micronutrient status of the population would also include information on women's folate levels. In 2015, WHO published its guideline "Optimal serum and red blood cell folate concentrations in women of reproductive age for prevention of neural tube defects": http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/guidelines/optimalserum_rbc_womenrep_tubedefects/en/. To have this indicator could be of great help in the advocacy for mandatory folic acid fortification and folic acid awareness campaigns in countries or regions that are currently not taking any action to prevent neural tube defects.

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