Build an enabling environment for enhance access to healthy, sustainable,

The government of Lao PDR aims to lower the stunting rate to 25% of children under five 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 aiming at improving health outcomes. This effort supports the broader aim of the National Socio-Economic Development Plan (NSEDP) by enhancing child health outcomes, which are vital for long-term economic growth and development.

To improve diet quality and the affordability, the government will promote agricultural education, crop diversification and the use of fresh local produces 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, vouchers accompanied with social and behaviour change, to support nutritionally vulnerable population, including pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls, children under 2 years of age (1000 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 sensitize the various stakeholders on healthy diets as well as on the consequences of consumption of unhealthy foods on the population’s health and the economy of the country.

Integration of Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) interventions into all health facilities will improve early childhood nutrition, including exclusive breastfeeding, timely initiation and appropriate complementary feeding practices and dietary diversity