Kenya made significant progress in nutrition outcomes in recent years.According ...
Kenya made significant progress in nutrition outcomes in recent years.According to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, the proportion of children under-five years who are short for their age (stunting) has reduced from 26 percent reported in 2014 to 18 percent in 2022. However, the improvements are not evenly distributed across the country with large disparities still existing. Stunting ranges from 9% to 37% across counties. On the other hand, wasting has remained a major problem in the arid and semi-arid counties. According to the 2023 short rains assessment conducted in February 2024, nutrition situation has remained extremely critical in Turkana South (IPC AMN Phase 5) and critical (IPC AMN Phase 4) in Turkana Central, Turkana West, Turkana North, North Horr, Laisamis sub-counties, Mandera and East Pokot in Baringo. Isiolo, Wajir, Garissa, Samburu, Tana River, Saku subcounty and West Pokot are in Serious phase (IPC AMN Phase 3). Malnutrition remains prevalent in these counties due to household food insecurity, poor child care practices, poor water quality, high disease burden, sub-optimal coverage of multisectoral high impact intervention and multiple recurrent shocks.
It is against this backdrop that UNICEF Kenya has been supporting the government at national and county level to implement actions to address malnutrition as espoused in the UNICEF Kenya Country Program 2022-2026 Survive and Thrive Program Strategy Note. Nutrition knowledge management is a key priority in the 2022-2026 Kenya country program geared towards creating, sharing, and managing nutrition knowledge and information to facilitate decision making, learning and innovation. To achieve this, UNICEF Kenya country office is seeking the support of a nutrition support officer to assist the nutrition section team to make best use of available data and knowledge. The officer will support the nutrition section to identify, organise and disseminate quality and effective products for a varied target audience including donors, government, and other stakeholders.