A child eats during a feeding session of a mothers’ group in Achham district, Nepal, February 2018. Photo: Marty Logan

Here’s a short update on my recent post, New mothers get rice, rupees and a rooster!

A municipality in Bara district, 60 km south of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, is distributing chickens to new mothers and pregnant women. The local initiative to add protein to families’ diets is part of the national Multi-Sector Nutrition Plan, which I’ve written about previously.

Hopefully, having municipalities involved in implementing the plan will make the second phase more successful than the first, which missed all of its targets.

This is a priority for the Nepal government as it tries to reach the Sustainable Development Goals for nutrition. Targets include reducing and maintaining childhood wasting to less than 5% by 2025, but the country’s rate has fallen by only 1% (from 11% to 10%) since 2001.