| Summary: | A practical guide to measures needed to ensure that the food and nutrition needs of disaster-stricken populations, refugees, or internally displaced persons are adequately met. Noting that nutrition is always a key concern in emergency management, the book offers expert advice based on both the latest knowledge in the nutritional sciences and advances in concepts of emergency management that stress preparedness and long-term recovery. The engagement of local health services and authorities is emphasized as the best strategy for building national capacity and ensuring rapid recovery. The book covers the concepts, principles, and precise measures needed to ensure adequate nutrition in both the relief phase and the subsequent rehabilitation and development phases. Details range from a list of the equipment needed for a weight-for-height survey, through a diagram illustrating arrangements for ration distribution in camp situations, to instructions for preparing feeding mixtures for the treatment of specific deficiency diseases. Throughout, particular attention is given to conditions in developing countries, where inadequate nutrition and infectious diseases can make populations especially vulnerable to malnutrition in emergencies. The book has seven chapters. The first, on meeting nutritional requirements, explains the importance of nutritional assessment, as a fundamental management tool for calculating food needs, monitoring the adequacy of food access and intake, and ensuring adequate food procurements. The chapter also sets out recommendations for mean daily per capita intakes of energy and protein and for micronutrients and other specific nutrients. The major nutritional deficiency diseases are covered in chapter two, which includes detailed information on the signs, symptoms, prevention, and treatment of protein-energy malnutrition, iron-deficiency anemia, vitamin A deficiency, iodine deficiency disorders, beriberi, pellagra, and scurvy. Chapter three describes the methodology for measuring malnutrition. Information includes target audiences for assessment, advice on body measurements and clinical indicators of malnutrition, and precise instructions for conducting rapid nutritional surveys, individual screening, and nutritional surveillance. Chapter four provides a detailed guide to the planning, organization, and delivery of general feeding programs aimed at the affected population as a whole. Topics covered include basic requirements for suitable food commodities, principles of good organization and coordination, and the composition of a general ration calculated to meet the populations' minimum requirements for energy, protein, fat, and micronutrients. Guidelines for selective feeding programs are presented in chapter five, which covers both the supplementary feeding of vulnerable groups and the therapeutic feeding of individuals suffering from deficiency diseases. In view of the close link between infectious diseases and malnutrition, chapter six offers advice on the organization of services to ensure priority immunizations and to monitor and treat each of twelve infectious diseases commonly seen in developing countries. The book concludes with advice on the planning, administration, and logistics of emergency preparedness and response programs, emphasizing the need to detect vulnerability to nutritional deficiencies and monitor early warning indicators.
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