Tanzania’s latest National Nutrition Survey shows a sharp decline in stunting rates

Front left to right: Tom Arnold, SUN Movement Coordinator ad interim; Jakaya Kikwete, President of Tanzania; Stephen Kebwe, Deputy Minister for Health & Social Welfare. Back left to right: Matthew Cousins, SUN Movement Strategy Advisor; William Chilufya, National Coordinator Civil Society Alliance for SUN Zambia.

In April 2015, the results of a National Nutrition Survey released in Tanzania show that between 2010 and 2014, chronic malnutrition – stunting, or low height for age – among children under five in the country fell from 42 per cent to 35 per cent.

“These results are very encouraging. The hidden crisis of chronic malnutrition is robbing thousands of our children of their full potential and hampering the social and economic progress of Tanzania”, said Mr. Obey Assery, SUN Government Focal Point for Tanzania.

“Undernutrition, and especially stunting, is one of the silent crises for children in Tanzania,” said UNICEF Representative in Tanzania Dr Jama Gulaid. “Malnutrition has severe consequences. It blunts the intellect, saps the productivity of everyone it touches and perpetuates poverty. The success we are celebrating today is due to increased political commitment and improved coordination mechanisms for nutrition since 2011.”

President Jakaya M. Kikwete became a member of the high-level international SUN Lead Group and played a key role in the promotion of the nutrition agenda at the international level and in Tanzania and shared these results at the recent meeting of the SUN Movement Lead Group Task Team in Tanzania.

The Government of Tanzania launched a five-year National Nutrition Strategy (2011-2016) with an Implementation Plan which guides actions by ministries, departments, agencies and local government authorities, as well as development partners. The Government is also tracking investments in nutrition. In 2014, The Ministry of Finance conducted the first Public Expenditure Review of the nutrition sector and first Joint Multi-sectoral Review of Nutrition analysing the implementation of the first three years of the National Nutrition Strategy.

The National Nutrition Survey was conducted in 2014 by the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and the Nutrition Unit of the Zanzibar Ministry of Health, with the technical and financial support of UNICEF, Irish AID and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID).

Learn more at the UNICEF Press Centre

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