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Contacts:
In Washington: John
Donaldson (202) 473 1367
jdonaldson@worldbank.org;
In
Madagascar:
Jocelyn
Rafidinarivo (261-20) 225 6000
jrafidinarivo@worldbank.org
Washington, November 21,
2006 – The World Bank Board of Executive
Directors today approved an International Development
Association (IDA) additional credit* of US$10 million to
support the Second Community Nutrition Project for the
implementation of the Government of Madagascar’s National
Nutrition Policy (PNN).
The
objectives of the Additional Credit for the
Second Nutrition Project are to help continue the previous
actions to reduce chronic malnutrition among children under
three and improve the nutritional status of school-aged
children and pregnant and lactating women in targeted project
areas. It will also help to ensure the financial
sustainability of activities financed until now. The
Government of Madagascar will finance the functioning of the
community nutrition sites.
“The
National Nutrition Policy recognizes the need of a coherent
institutional framework to ensure adequate policy guidance,
coordination, monitoring and evaluation and the execution of
nutrition activities in a sustainable manner. The Government
of Madagascar moved
rapidly and effectively by creating the National Nutrition
Council and the National Nutrition Office. Further
efforts are now under way
to finalize this institutionalization,” said Montserrat Meiro-Lorenzo, the World Bank
Task Team Leader for the project.
The
Project will be implemented through four components: the
Community Nutrition Program, the School Nutrition Program,
Institutionalization of the National Nutrition Policy (PNN)
and Information Education Communication (IEC), Training and
Project Management.
“The
results of a recent impact evaluation of the current Nutrition
Program show a decrease of 10% in underweight children under
three in sites that
had been with the program for twoyears,”
said
James Bond, Acting Country Manager for Madagascar.
“Projections
suggest that the proposed scaling-up, financed by this IDA
Credit, will likely allow Madagascar to
achieve the nutrition Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
target by 2015.”
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For more
information on the World Bank’s work in sub-Saharan Africa visit: http://www.worldbank.org/afr
For more
information on the World Bank’s work in Madagascar
visit: http://www.worldbank.org/ml
For more
information please visit the
project site
*The credit is on standard International
Development Association (IDA) terms, with a commitment fee of
0.5 percent and a service charge of 0.75 percent. The period
of maturity is 40 years, including a 10-year period of
grace.
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