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Central Asia Stunting Initiative (CASI)
Combating nutritional deficiencies among pregnant women, mothers and children
Central Asia Stunting Initiative (CASI)
Pakistan
To address the cause of stunting in the most remote and marginalized communities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan, the Aga Khan Development Network has undertaken key strategic interventions to address this prevailing issue in these countries under the Central Asia Stunting Initiative (CASI).
In Pakistan, CASI targets in 136 remote and marginalized villages of Chitral, Ghizer and Hunza valleys. These villages are included in the programme due to the have high levels of stunting, poverty scoring, and food insecurity as reported in an assessment performed by Aga Khan Rural Support Programme.
A key objective of the Initiative is to break the cycle of under nutrition, by providing direct nutrition services to women and children, with a special focus on the first 1000 days, beginning from pregnancy.
To support the project, AKDN dHRC, in collaboration with the Aga Khan Health Service, Pakistan, has developed the CASI mobile application to support Lady Health Visitors (LHVs) in select areas of Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral to conduct nutrition assessments during community visits and offer nutrition supplements as required to combat nutritional deficiencies in pregnant women, mothers and children. The application digitizes the assessment forms for the LHVs and enables them to digitally track and monitor patients in communities, as opposed to the cumbersome, paper-based process, which uses registers.
During 2021, the CASI application was developed with stakeholder input and piloted in select areas of Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan. Health worker training was provided, and the application was implemented on a larger scale across Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan. Currently, the application is being used by 12 LHVs.
Plans for 2022 include updating the application based on stakeholder feedback, including additional cadres of health workers, like community health workers and Lady Health Workers and designing a robust reporting portal for administrative use.
The CASI is a three-year project, initiated in 2020 and funded by the Leaders International Forum (LIF) and the Aga Khan Foundation, with a yearly budget of PKR 1,000,000 for Pakistan.