8.7  Nutrition emergency interventions

Nutrition emergency interventions are set up to prevent the death of many people in the community and to protect their livelihood systems. The interventions are aimed at reducing excess mortality that might result during the first few weeks to months of the emergency situation. The emergency interventions might involve provision of:

• Food
• Shelter (if people are already displaced)
• A programme to control diarrhoeal diseases and follow up (surveillance) of epidemic occurrence
• A curative care unit
• Coordination of operational partners, including the sector offices and non-governmental organisations working in your community.

Responses include those that are curative, such as therapeutic care and those that are preventative of further problems such as improving the water supply and sanitation to prevent epidemics of disease.

Two main interventions to protect livelihood and prevent deaths are:

1. General food distribution (GFD)
2. Selective feeding programmes, such as:
   • Supplementary feeding programmes (SFP)
   • Blanket supplementary feeding programmes (BSFP)
   • Therapeutic feeding programmes (TFP).