Tuesday 23 / April / 2024
Muscat: Oman’s National Nutrition Strategy vision for the next ten years aligns well with the WHO Regional Nutrition Strategy that aims to ensure universal access to healthy and sustainable diets, and implement effective nutritional actions, targeting a life-cycle approach to mothers, infants, children, adolescents and the elderly in all settings including emergencies.
The National Nutrition Strategy 2020-2030, which is derived from Oman Vision 2040, aims to promote the work in the nutrition field to achieve food security and eliminate all forms of malnutrition in addition to enhancing nutrition for life by 2030.
This can be realised by the cooperation of relevant public and private sectors for achieving the fundamental objectives that strengthen the health and nutrition status of community.
The Ministry of Health represented by the Directorate General of Primary Health Care’s Nutrition Department in partnership with the World Health Organisation Office in Oman, held on Monday a meeting to discuss operational plan of the National Nutrition Strategy and Work Frame 2020-2030 at the Crown Plaza-Muscat.
The meeting was attended by Dr. Jean Jabbour, WHO representative in Oman, with the presence of representatives of the concerned Ministries and international organisations.
The meeting commenced with an address by the WHO representative in Oman where he affirmed developing a national strategy by identifying detailed activities and implementation mechanisms.
He further called for determining the roles of sectors concerned with implementing strategies and developing a time frame for follow up activities
The Director of Nutrition, Dr. Salima Al Mamari affirmed that the Sultanate has made great progress in reducing the cases of undernourishment over the past four decades due to rapid social and economic development.
However, the prevalence of some forms of undernourishment remains significantly high, with 11.4 percent of children under five suffering from stunting (chronic malnutrition) and 9.3 percent suffering from wasting (acute malnutrition), as per the National Nutrition Survey 2017.
Dr. Al Mamari added that like other Eastern Mediterranean Region countries, Oman is experiencing a nutritional transition as other forms of malnutrition, including overweight, obesity and nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (N-NCDs) are becoming increasingly important.
The implementation of the multi-sectoral National Nutrition Strategy serves directly in preventing NCDs.
The meeting emphasised the roles of health-related sectors played in promoting individual health. The participants will be involved in the preparation of the strategy’s operational plan and performance indicators. Roles will be distributed to pave the way towards updating the monitoring and follow up system to achieve best outcomes through joint agreement on implementation mechanisms.
The strategy and its framework identified a multi-sectoral approach, across the whole of government and community to address the persistent problems of stunting and wasting as well as the increasing problems of overweight, obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases.
