The objective of the government of Timor Leste in developing the National Nutrition Strategy (NNS) is to provide guidance for implementing interventions to ensure adequate nutritional status of the population. The NNS will therefore be developed with immediate and longer term strategies starting with special emphasis on the mother and her child. The policy covers activities both within and beyond the Ministry of Health, including the donor community, NGOs, and the private sector. The interventions are intended to have high impact, be integrated, sustainable and community orientated and target the most vulnerable and critical periods of growth in the life cycle. The Goal of the National Nutrition Strategy is to provide directed interventions to improve the nutritional status of all citizens of Timor Leste and is organized according to the three levels: National (central services), service delivery and community/family. It is recognised that interventions at each level will often rely on and support interventions at other levels. All the fundamental guidelines, discussed in Section 1.2, are intrinsic to the way the following components are designed and implemented and work together. Key components are: 1. Maternal and Child Nutrition (including: ensure appropriate health and nutrition interventions for protection of foetal and infant growth; support community processes and caring behaviours that contribute to protection of foetal and infant growth); 2. Food security (including: multisectorial interventions, community engagement in problem identification and interventions, ongoing research). This combination of immediate and longer term strategies will address the currently known nutritional needs of the community and enable further investigation of unnoticed or emerging needs in the future (pags. 15 and 16).
National Nutrition Strategy will therefore perform the following activities: link with other ministries (especially the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) in a multisectorial approach to addressing food security issues; contribute to other ministry initiatives, from a public health perspective, in regard to food security programs; engage the community in household food security problem identification and action; encourage and draw on field research to inform potential interventions (pag. 20).
The over-riding goals for the development of Timor Leste are to reduce poverty and to promote rapid, equitable and sustainable economic growth. Key elements of the Poverty Reduction Strategy, which is contained in the National Development Plan (NDP), include the provision of basic social services and security of person and property, including food security. Thus the provision and effective use of basic social services, in particular health and education services, is seen as an important means to break the poverty cycle (pag. 13). A national committee, which included representatives of MoAFF and MoH, could consider how to take into account nutritional as well as economic needs in the promotion and support of small scale horticulture for improved household and community food security, rural employment and equitable poverty reduction (pag. 21).
The text consists of six Sections as follows: 1. Rights to Nutrition (Analysis of the Situation in Timor Leste; Analysis of the Causes of Child Undernutrition and Importance of Disease on Under-Nutrition and Underlying Causes); 2: Policy Context and Guiding Principles; 3: Policy Objective (Goal of the Nutrition Strategy Components of the Strategy); 4: Component 2: Food Security; 5: Institutional Approach (Creation of a Supportive Policy Environment and Managerial Capacity and Intersectorial Approach); 6: Monitoring and Evaluation.