Children who experience wasting during early childhood are more likely to face long-term consequences, such as cognitive impairments and developmental delays. Since 2018, USAID Advancing Nutrition has collaborated with diverse nutrition stakeholders in the Democratic Republic of Congo to better understand and document ways to strengthen the continuum of care for the treatment and prevention of wasting in children under the age of 5.

During this webinar, speakers discussed learning activities on coordination and collaboration between emergency and development-focused actors, and the ready-to-use therapeutic food supply chain. They presented key findings, lessons learned, and globally-relevant takeaways. The event was available in English and French.

Webinar Recording

Webinar Resources

• Access the slide deck (PDF, 7.57 MB)
• View the webinar transcript (PDF, 257.06 KB)
• View questions from the webinar with responses from panelists (PDF, 260.53 KB)

Speakers

• Amanda Yourchuck (moderator) is a senior emergency nutrition technical advisor for USAID Advancing Nutrition. She has over 13 years of experience supporting wasting treatment and prevention activities, including integrated community-based management of acute malnutrition services, multi-sectoral nutrition, and systems strengthening approaches. She is the technical backstop for the project’s Nutrition in Humanitarian Context team activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) . Before joining USAID Advancing Nutrition, she was a Nutrition and Health Advisor with Concern Worldwide and held several positions on the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance project.
• Marcel Ntumba is a project management specialist at the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA). He has approximately 20 years of humanitarian and development programming experience in health, nutrition, WASH, and food security and protection programming. He has worked for several humanitarian and development organizations in Burundi, Angola, Uganda and DRC.  He joined the USAID DRC Mission in 2011, and became a member of the BHA office in 2015. 
• Mike Manske is a nutrition advisor at the USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance. He has worked in the field of public health nutrition and food security for over 15 years. In his current role at USAID, he provides technical assistance to global awards such as USAID Advancing Nutrition and supports country programs, especially in West and Central Africa. Prior to USAID, Mike designed and implemented community health, nutrition and food security programs working for several implementing partners.  
• Ben Hatch is a senior technical advisor with the JSI Center for Health Logistics. He has more than 11 years of experience and applied skill in international health in leading, designing, implementing, and evaluating projects focused on supply chains for health and education commodities. His areas of expertise include data analysis; monitoring and evaluation; program evaluation; system design; and quality improvement. In his capacity with the Center for Health Logistics he works closely with country governments to assess and strengthen supply chains for malaria, reproductive health, and nutrition commodities as well as educational materials.