The Ministry of Health of a lower-income country has decided to institute a national nutrition surveillance system to monitor the country’s most pressing child and maternal nutrition problems. The surveillance system should incorporate the micronutrient deficiencies that affect the population, and account for people at different life stages, socioeconomic, and geographic groups’ vulnerabilities to individual nutrient deficiencies. As a health professional working for the ministry, provide your professional summary for a selected lower middle income country, of the nutritional problems, target groups, approaches to assessment, options for routine contact in the community, and types of agencies to organize into a surveillance system to guide the ministry. Discuss ways in which single-micronutrient deficiency prevention strategies might be combined, integrated, or coordinated to achieve cost-effective control. Describe the roles of general rations, supplementary feeding programs, and therapeutic feeding programs in maintaining population nutrition.
