Field Exchange - Issue 33

This issue of Field Exchange is published in the 'after-glow' of the high profile and long-awaited Lancet series on 'Maternal and Child Undernutrition.' The series of five papers are summarised in this issue with various comments posted in the letters section. In essence, the Lancet series sets out the scale of nutrition problems globally, their human and economic impact, evidence for interventions that have (or have not) made some inroads into the problem, culminating in an analysis of what needs to change if the global burden of undernutrition is to be addressed. Nutrition in emergencies gets very little attention in the series (mainly in paper 5). This may well be appropriate given the scale of endemic undernutrition in non-emergency contexts. However, the limited discussion and analysis of nutrition in humanitarian crises is piece-meal, poorly developed or substantiated and contributes little to current debate and thinking. A major opportunity has been missed.