The Importance of Multi-Sectoral Nutrition in Burkina Faso: Interview with Dr. Sidi Coulibaly

By Emily Cassio, Project Officer and Kossana Young, Communications Officer

In Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in West Africa’s semi-arid Central Sahel, 1.9 million people are internally displaced due to rising conflict. This growing and dispersed population poses challenges to Burkina’s health system—each year there are only 4-5 doctors who agree to work at the village level, meaning the public health work is spread across multiple populations in various districts throughout the country.?

Meet Sidi Coulibaly, a pediatrician who’s first medical post was as a chief doctor in a village where he provided?a range of services, from preventative care and curative treatment in community health to family planning, vaccination, and more. Dr. Coulibaly was one of only two doctors that worked across 30 health centers in a single health district.?

Dr. Coulibaly went on to direct DSSE (Direction des Statistiques sectorielles et de l'évaluation) before bringing his perspective and experiences to his role as Chief of Party for USAID Advancing Nutrition Burkina Faso, working to advance public health through multi-sectoral nutrition.

“In multi-sectoral nutrition, it is important to have sensitivity, to listen, to communicate, and to anticipate,” says Coulibaly.

USAID Advancing Nutrition has worked in Burkina Faso since November 2020, collaborating with the country’s government and other key stakeholders to improve results-based planning for targeted nutrition results.

Sitting down with Project Officer Emily Cassio, Dr. Coulibaly explained the current nutrition climate in Burkina Faso, priorities in addressing malnutrition in the country, and how USAID Advancing Nutrition is addressing critical multi-sectoral nutrition challenges.?

This conversation has been translated from French and edited for length.

Tell us about the nutrition situation in Burkina and how USAID Advancing Nutrition is addressing some of the challenges.

The nutrition situation in Burkina is not good. All forms of malnutrition exist here; currently, under and overnutrition are both problems. Acute malnutrition is decreasing, chronic malnutrition is decreasing, but the situation is still not ideal, especially when it comes to micronutrient deficiencies.?

USAID Advancing Nutrition work focuses on supporting the implementation of the strategic plans and policies that promote a multi-sectoral approach in order to understand the nutrition problems and what actions can be taken by the stakeholders to address them. USAID Advancing Nutrition also facilitates opportunities for all of the actors in multi-sectoral nutrition to come together and share ideas, discuss difficulties and work together. This kind of multi-sectoral teamwork in nutrition has never been seen before in Burkina Faso and USAID Advancing Nutrition is facilitating it by supporting policies and strategies to ensure it continues.?

Looking ahead to the challenges that country faces, what do you think are the most important priorities to address malnutrition in Burkina Faso??

One of the big challenges in Burkina Faso is how we can ensure people have access to nutritious food, so one of the biggest priorities is to improve access to healthy food and to have ready-to-use therapeutic food to support children when necessary. Funding for nutrition is another challenge and it is important that the funding we receive for nutrition work is targeted in the right way to ensure it will make an impact. Improving governance for nutrition is of high priority as this work touches all of the biggest challenges.?

Can you share one accomplishment you are most proud of in your work with USAID Advancing Nutrition over the past three years?

The work we have done to support the Burkina Faso National Food Fortification Alliance (ANF-BF). We have supported the ANF-BF to develop a Strategic Guidance Document for Regulatory Surveillance of Large-Scale Food Fortification Programs in Burkina Faso. This year, we plan to support the ANF-BF to conduct supervision visits to fortified food production units as well as supporting their? biannual meeting. Before this support, no other partners were supporting this group. But now that they have seen the work they can accomplish, others are coming in to support as USAID Advancing Nutrition phases out.

I am also very proud of the nutrition profiles we produced last year, because this is a very helpful product that will be consulted by many stakeholders for decision making and advocacy on nutrition issues. The digitalization of regional indicator dashboards that is currently in progress is also very exciting. This will allow better monitoring of the key indicators of the Multisectoral Nutrition Strategic Plan, which is essential for the achievement of the objectives of this plan.?