Sustainable Micronutrient Interventions to Control Deficiencies and Improve Nutritional Status and General Health in Asia

The Research Institute

The Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) is a French public research institute working for the development of countries in the south. The Institute has a role in managing research, consultancy and capacity building activities in low and middle income countries for over 60 years. For its programmes in the South, research is focused on six general themes:

• Natural hazards and climate
• Sustainable management of Southern ecosystems
• Water resources and access to water
• Food security
• Public health and health policy
• Development and globalisation.

The Institute conducts research on malnutrition in Africa, South-East Asia and Latin America. In South-East Asia IRD has 4 sites with permanent staff and researchers located in Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietna

The Research Unit implied in the project is the UMR NutriPass "Prevention of malnutrition and associated pathologies". Research activities include improving nutritional quality of foods in order to fullfill the nutritional needs of at-risk groups such as young children, improving the effectiveness of existing micronutrient programs such as post-partum vitamin A supplementation for women and developing innovative interventions such as weekly multiple micronutrient supplementation for women of reproductive age and fortified rice for school feeding programs.

All research and technical staff have a long experience in malnutrition in developing countries especially in the field of micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity, nutritional intervention strategies and programs, with over 15 years of research collaboration on micronutrients with SE Asian countries.

The IRD in South-East Asia

The IRD is also made of representations that support research programs in the Southern countries, especially in the five target countries of SMILING.

http://www.thailand.ird.fr/

http://www.irdlaos.org/eng/centre/index.htm

The IRD Laos representation cover research programs developped in Lao PDR and Cambodia.

http://www.indonesie.ird.fr/

http://www.vietnam.ird.fr/

Main tasks

The IRD will be responsible for the overall coordination of the project (Work Package leader WP1) and be coleader of WP5 (summarizing of data and recommendation from WP2 – WP4), WP6 (multi-criteria mapping), and WP8 (dissemination).