Asia Regional Meeting on Regulatory Monitoring of Salt and Flour Fortification Programmes

When

27 September 2011 - 29 September 2011

Where

Region: Asia-Pacific

Summary

This workshop addressed the common regulatory concerns of fortifying salt and flour. Participants included 72 representatives from public and private sectors in nine countries with on-going mandatory salt and flour fortification programs.External monitoring by regulatory authorities commonly suffers from resource constraints and difficulties in establishing effective practices. Internal regulatory monitoring, especially in smaller enterprises, is often weak or even non-existent.A major observation from the meeting was that improving and strengthening the fortification process and establishing 'process checks’ at mills and by regulatory authorities was probably the most important part of monitoring - even more important than testing the final product.The meeting allowed countries to compare experiences and to discuss options and ways of improving internal and external monitoring. The team from Nepal is picture at left. Specific action plans to address identified weaknesses were developed by all participating country teams. FFI and other organizing agencies (UNICEF, GAIN, MI, WHO and the World Bank) will support countries to implement these plans in the coming months.