Photo: Miriam Schneidman With World Bank support, the government of Rwanda has developed a bold new approach to tackle stunting, chronic malnutrition, with an enhanced package of multisectoral interventions. As a result, there has been a significant uptake in health and nutrition services, such as growth monitoring and micronutrient supplementation, expanded access to early childhood development services, and reforms to community-based delivery platforms.
Challenge
Rwanda has made remarkable progress on infant, child and maternal mortality, meeting or exceeding most goals. However, stunting remained stubbornly high at about 38 percent in 2015 and affected nearly 50 percent of the poorest children. In 2017, the government made a high-level political commitment to drastically reduce stunting, recognizing it impeded cognitive development, educational attainment, and lifetime earnings and deprived the economy of critical human capital to attaining middle-income status. An