Build an enabling environment for enhanced access to healthy, sustainable, and affordable diets and improve access to quality nutrition services

The Lao PDR government aims to lower the stunting rate to 25% of children under 5 years of age by 2030. The impact of food system policies will be assessed through regular surveys, studies and reports to ensure that those policies are delivering the intended health benefits. Along this process, communities will benefit from targeted nutrition and health interventions aimed at improving health outcomes. This effort supports the broader aim of the National Socio-Economic Development Plan by enhancing child health outcomes, which are vital for long-term economic growth and development.

To improve diet quality and affordability, the government will promote agricultural education, crop diversification and the use of fresh local produce in food-based safety nets, such as the National School Lunch Programme. Nutrition-sensitive social protection initiatives will be further expanded, including cash for nutrition and vouchers accompanied with social and behaviour change, to support nutritionally vulnerable populations, including pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls and children under 2 years of age (1,000 days).

The government of Lao PDR will improve the delivery of nutrition services through the primary health system to address malnutrition with a particular focus on remote areas.

Social and behaviour change interventions across the programmes will be designed to sensitise the various stakeholders on healthy diets as well as on the consequences of the consumption of unhealthy foods on the population’s health and the economy of the country.

Integration of infant and young child feeding interventions into all health facilities will improve early childhood nutrition, including exclusive breastfeeding, timely initiation and appropriate complementary feeding practices and dietary diversity.