Summary of WFP assistance
Poverty, food insecurity and under-nutrition remain widespread in Timor-Leste, with 41 percent of the population living below the national poverty line 1 and over half food insecure. The Mother and Child Health and Nutrition – Targeted Supplementary Feeding Programme (TSFP) aims to treat moderate acute malnutrition in children aged 6-59 months and malnourished pregnant women and nursing mothers, while building the capacity of the Ministry of Health.
The TSFP for children has been successfully implemented in the three priority municipalities of Bobonaro, Covalima and Oecussi, which includes embedding WFP staff in the municipal health facilities, and providing ongoing mentoring and support. In the next quarter, the TSFP will expand to include pregnant and nursing mothers in these 3 existing municipalities, as well as expand into three new municipalities: Ermera, Ainaro, and Dili. A capacity assessment of the health staff’s readiness and the 67 health facilities for these 3 new districts was conducted in August. As part of this exercise, health staff were provided with orientation sessions on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems, nutrition and logistics. WFP’s M&E specialists introduced a results-based monitoring framework to improve the quality of measuring against relevant indicators, thereby improving donor reporting.
The programme designed a number of quick fix interventions to address the low participation rates in certain health posts or high default rates in others, which includes increasing community participation and engagement in the programme and communications activities in order to enhance the community’s understanding of malnutrition and the benefits of treating malnutrition.