SPOON’s Nutrition Scientist, Zeina Makhoul, just returned from her first trip to mountainous Lesotho–the world’s largest enclave country–where we are embarking on a national-scale project to link nutrition screening and the early identification of disabilities of children.
Sponsored by UNICEF-Lesotho, SPOON is partnering with the Lesotho National Federation of Organisations of the Disabled (LNFOD) and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health’s Department of International Health to develop guidelines, tools, educational materials, and capacity in early detection of disability in children under six years old and in monitoring the nutritional status of children with disabilities.
Identifying disabilities in children as early as possible means they can be provided with interventions sooner, which improves the chances of them growing up healthy and reaching their full potential. This project is particularly exciting for us because it gives us the opportunity to broaden our training and tools to include early disability identification, leading to better impact when children are at some of the most critical developmental periods.
During Zeina’s recent trip, she and LNFOD led a two-day workshop with representatives from the Lesotho Ministries of Health, Education, Social Development, and Agriculture and Food Security as well as the Prime Minister’s Food and Nutrition Coordinating Office and UNICEF Lesotho. They discussed how early disability identification coupled with nutrition screening could work in Lesotho’s national context and how they might build on or strengthen existing structures to do so. Notably, it was an opportunity to engage all these agencies in this work and create a mutual understanding and shared language around disability. Zeina said, “It was exciting to see a sense of shared responsibility across sectors for supporting children with disabilities–everyone has ownership and everyone has a role to play.”
The next steps for the project are to proceed with co-designing the early disability identification tools and training materials with key stakeholders, with training slated to begin this fall.
