Devex: Nepal's nutrition gains at risk after funding cuts
Over the last three decades, Nepal has steadily reduced child malnutrition, but U.S. funding cuts now threaten to reverse that progress – according to coverage from Devex.
Reporting from Krishnanagar, Nepal, journalist Sunita Neupane details the fallout from the abrupt termination of Helen Keller’s USAID-funded nutrition program, drawing on interviews with families, health workers, and Helen Keller’s Country Director, Pooja Pandey Rana.
Until January 2025, Helen Keller served as the primary implementing partner for Integrated Nutrition, a USAID-funded, multi-year project aimed at reducing child malnutrition in Nepal.
Working alongside the Nepali government, local organizations, and thousands of community health heroes, Helen Keller supported a suite of interventions. These included health workers screening children for malnutrition in their homes; community volunteers teaching families how to grow and prepare nutritious foods; and clinics stocking therapeutic foods and medicines.
The project built upon decades of progress and investment: in the mid-1990s, Nepal had the highest rate of stunting in the world, with more than 60% of children under five affected due to poor nutrition. By 2022, that number had dropped to 25%.
The next phase of U.S.-funded support was designed to accelerate this progress by expanding nutrition interventions across all seven provinces and increasing assistance for hard-to-reach communities.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
“Preparations were complete — hundreds of staff recruited and millions allocated — before the program was halted, said Pooja Pandey Rana, Nepal country director for Helen Keller Intl. Rana described the trust they had built with the community over the past 12 years as their greatest asset. The abrupt termination forced her team to tell 60 newly hired staff they no longer had a job. “It was a huge shock for me,” she said.”
Read the article here: A decade of nutrition gains at risk as US-funded systems vanish in Nepal | Devex
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