Call to action

• • Review and update national plans, strategies, policies and programmes to reduce anaemia, based on an understanding of the specific causes and social determinants of anaemia in the country context and priority population groups.
  • Include missing proven interventions, especially for adolescent girls and women of reproductive age, which are appropriate in the country context in policies, legislation and programmes.
  • Improve system readiness to deliver evidence-based interventions throughout the life course within existing multisector delivery platforms, while ensuring adequacy in key system components – financing, supply logistics, human resources and monitoring – for universal coverage of programmes.
  • Strengthen survey and routine programme data systems to capture anaemia prevalence, nutritional and non-nutritional determinants of anaemia and coverage of interventions to reduce anaemia. Prioritize the integration of missing indicators into existing data systems and dashboards to drive coordinated and data-informed actions.
  • Build a learning and research agenda to better inform what works best and how while exploring implementation pathways, behavioural drivers and impacts of anaemia interventions to guide scale up efforts.
  • Demonstrate at-scale implementable national and subnational last mile delivery models that deliver diagnostics and evidence-based interventions. Undertaking regular system readiness reviews at the subnational level will be key to driving continuous learning and improvements in delivery.
  • Harness the power of innovators, start-ups and entrepreneurs to innovate new solutions and scale up existing innovations to accelerate the diagnosis, prevention and management of anaemia in South Asia.