Rwanda Hosts Federation Of African Nutrition Society Conference
Kigali, August 23, 2019, The Federation of African Nutrition Society (FANUS) is set to hold its 4th General Assembly in Kigali.
The conference that will run from 26th to 29th August 2019 in Lemigo Hotel will mainly focus on child stunting as a major public health concern across Sub-Saharan African countries and Rwanda among them.
Around a theme of “Nutrition in Action for Sustainable Development in Africa”, the conference will be a great opportunity to get updates on nutrition situation at global, regional and country specific levels. It will be an opportunity to showcase countries’ achievements in addressing malnutrition in Africa. The conference will furthermore be an exchange forum of best practices and approaches among African countries.
Reacting on the conference, the president of Rwanda Nutritionists Society Dr. Christine Mukantwali said that “The conference itself is a good platform to jointly strengthen the functioning of national nutrition societies and influence nutrition in Africa. And Rwanda will particularly benefit in diverse ways: policy makers, decision makers, program implementers and professionals will get updated knowledge and best practices from diverse speakers of the conference. By sharing what Rwanda does to reduce malnutrition, the conference attendees will also provide their insights as a way for improvement.”
FANUS mainly highlights their conference regarding, Nutrition in Africa-changing patterns and causalities, Nutrition as a human right or as an investment case, Nutrition governance and accountability, Breast-feeding and complementary feeding, Maternal nutrition-the neglected factor, Obesity and NCDs in Africa, Nutrition training and education.
The conference will bring together nutrition experts and different people with experiences implementing nutrition specific and sensitive interventions coming from government institutions, NGOs, research institutes, academia, developmental professionals’ organizations and private sector from all over Africa and the rest of the world.
Rwanda was selected to host the conference based on its strong leadership and political commitment to eliminate all forms of malnutrition. Being active member of FANUS and International Union of Nutrition Sciences (IUNS), the Rwanda Nutritionists’ Society (RNS) was mandated to organize the conference in collaboration with FANUS executive committee.
Although child under nutrition has been declining in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is still a challenge with regards to malnutrition, in particular stunting (short height for age). Some countries have achieved good progress towards reduction of stunting. For example, according to the 2014-15 Rwanda DHS, stunting declined from 51% in 2010 to 38% in 2015 among under five-year old children. In Ghana stunting declined from 20 to 13% between 2008 and 2014. In Kenya it declined from 33% to 23% between 2008- 2013 while in Namibia the stuting fell from 37 to 13% between 2007 and 2003.
