ABSTRACT

In contrast, interventions in child nutrition generally focus more on food consumption and are often aimed at individual cases, usually involving direct contact between programme staff and mothers and children. Even so, there exist considerable variations between different types of intervention in child nutrition - notably variations in type of approach, nature of the target group and programme objectives. Different authors have classified child nutrition programmes in slightly different ways. Beaton & Bengoa (1976) in their handbook on nutrition in preventive medicine devote separate chapters to nutritional surveillance, nutrition education, supplementary feeding and nutrition rehabilitation. Austin & Zeitlin (1981) in a later handbook on nutrition intervention in developing countries, reserve separate chapters for supplementary feeding, nutrition education and integrated nutrition and health care. Since nutritional surveillance and integrated nutrition and health care usually consist of a composite of measures, three basic forms of nutrition intervention can be distinguished: nutrition education, food supplementation and nutrition rehabilitation.