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Thin on the Ground: Questioning the Evidence Behind World Bank-funded Community Nutrition Projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and UgandaPublication DateJune 15, 2003
SummaryIn this report, Save the Children UK claims that World Bank efforts to curb childhood malnutrition in Bangladesh, Uganda, and Ethiopia have had no impact. Resources may be being wasted on these large-scale communitynutrition projects, the charity claims. It "found no difference in the rates of malnutrition" in Bangladesh after six years of project implementation. "Growth monitoring charts were poorly understood by mothers and supplementary feeding had limited effectiveness especially for very young children". The report claims that the projects are based on a "widely discredited" approach, which assumes "that the child is malnourished because the mother isn't doing something right". The report is also critical of what Save the Children UK sees as inadequate monitoring and/or insufficiently transparent communication of evaluation results. It urges the World Bank and donors to stop further scale-up of these projects until objective reviews are completed, as follows:
Excerpts from the Executive Summary: In addition to design problems, the projects face a host of implementation constraints. First, the African projects rely on inadequately trained, under-supervised and poorly paid nutrition workers to implement a complex intervention. In addition, project costs are $5-10 per year for each person enrolled on the project, often exceeding the per capita investment in healthservices several times over. The implementation in Uganda and Bangladesh relies on parallel structures (staff, facilities, resources) that for the most part will not last beyond the life of the project, rendering it institutionally unsustainable. Therefore, before making any further investments of this kind, Save the Children UK asks that the World Bank:
SourceBretton Woods Update 35 (July-August 2003), forwarded to The Communication Initiative on July 31 2003. Placed on the Communication Initiative site April 28 2004 Last Updated June 24 2009 How useful did you find the knowledge and contacts on this page to your work? Post your comments (review comments from others below):COMMENTS POSTED |
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Dear Colleagues
What a shame. This report came out in 2003. It is now 2005. Nobody has given any feedback in ths space, yet. But it certainly deserves a lot of publicity, and Tr-Ac-Net will help all it can to mobilize some publicity.
Peter Burgess
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Peter Burgess
Tr-Ac-Net in New York 212 772 6918 peterbnyc@gmail.com
The Transparency and Accountability Network
With Kris Dev in Chennai India
and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America
http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com