ADDIS ABABA – November 15, 2024 (NIPN-Ethiopia) - Two East African NIPN-member countries participated in an experience-sharing visit to Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao-PDR) last week. The visit, involving participants from NIPN-Ethiopia and NIPN-Kenya, aimed to identify good practices, challenges, innovations, and lessons learned in sub-national rollout, as well as to outline key focus areas for 2025.
An available document indicates that participants from the two countries conducted field visits to observe the establishment, the governance modality, and functioning of sub-national multisector coordination committee in Lao-PDR. They engaged with Vice Governor of the NIPN cascaded province, government officials, partners, and stakeholders to assess progress and gather valuable insights.
The NIPN-Ethiopia and representatives from the subnational team are believed to learn from the progress and experience of NIPN Lao-PDR on subnational rollout. Additionally, they are expected to use this opportunity to gain insights from the EC-NIS-NIPN implementation in Lao-PDR. C4N-NIPN GC are reportedly invested in understanding, supporting, and documenting the best practice exchanges between platforms to optimize future evolutions of the NIPN approach.
Participants also had the opportunity to visit selected health facilities (health center, hospitals, district health bureau and provincial department of public health) in Lao-PDR to understand the data collection, management, and use for nutrition programming. There were also presentations and discussions on the subnational rollout of NIPN in Ethiopia and Kenya (the challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations). Participants exchanged views on decision making process at the subnational level, the involvement of contributing sectors in subnational NIPN, enhancing advocacy, communication, and dissemination strategies, and improving NIPN-NIS collaboration and joint actions.
The Ethiopian visiting team comprised five participants representing NIPN-Ethiopia, GIZ, Amhara Regional Public Health Institute and Sidama Regional Public Health Institute. (NIPN-Ethiopia)
